On Friday February 28th 1975 at 08.51 am, a call was received by London Fire Brigade control from the Ops room at Scotland Yard to "Moorgate Tube Station; train run into buffers at end of line; send six pumps; initiate major incident procedure" This was the call to what was to become a six day incident for the London Fire Brigade and the city's other emergency services.
A train driver (known as a motorman) had driven his 6 coach London Underground train that had left Drayton Park in West London into the buffers and a 5 feet thick brick wall at the end of the underground line at Moorgate, on the Northern Line. On board this train were 300 passengers making their way to work during the busiest time of the rush hour.
The train was believed to have been travelling at around 40 mph when it passed through a sand trap that was meant to stop a train if it overran the station platform if travelling at a slow speed. Passengers on platform waiting said that the train appeared to shudder and accelerate as it arrived at the station, then pass through before the crash.
The incident would have not been so bad had the train been in a normal sized underground tube tunnel, but the tunnel was built to house main line trains and was 16 ft high. This larger headroom in the tunnel meant that the second coach in the set could ride up above the trailing end of the driving coach telescoping, and then land on top of it. The third coach then split apart lengthwise and rode over the end of the second coach. The front coach suffered the most damage, buckling at two points into a V shape, and was then crushed into the wall by the weight of the coaches piling up behind it. The first fifteen feet had been compacted down to two feet, and the next 3 coaches were now the length of a London bus. In that mangled mess were dozens of trapped, injured and dead passengers.
This is what the officer-in-charge of the first attendance, who arrived at 08.58, was confronted with, and hardly any room to get to those involved. The police had already asked that "Major incident procedure" be implemented, this meant that all of London's emergency services would act on a predetermined plan, and those hospitals, doctors and other authorities would be prepared for what was happening.
One of the problems faced by crews attending was the lack of radio communications caused by the incident being below ground, so any messages had to be passed back and forth by each person down the chain. Once cutting equipment was in use this then became almost impossible. It is said that in this confusion a doctor requested "Entonox" (a pain-killing gas) but by the time the message was received above ground it became a request for an "empty box". Eventually a prototype communications system was sent to the incident and this proved to help greatly getting over the problems.
The operation to extricate those injured, trapped, dying or dead was to go on for six days, and involved more than 1,300 firefighters, 240 policemen, 80 ambulance staff and 16 doctors, working in shifts which were to become shorter and shorter due to the worsening conditions.
During the rescue, the heat, caused by hot cutting gear being used, and lack of air circulation in the dead end tunnel, temperatures would reach over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, causing heat exhaustion for those working in the cramped conditions. The high temperatures also made the possibility of the spread of disease a high risk, so everyone working below ground was inoculated against this risk, before being allowed to work. On leaving the incident everyone involved then had to be decontaminated. This was done by a detachment from the Army whose help had been requested to carry out the task. The heat was lowered to some extend when large industrial fans were brought into help circulate air through the tunnels, but this was hindered by the incident being in the dead end tunnel.
One passenger, a young police woman was freed after 12 hours work by rescuers, but even after this time she could only be extracted once her foot had been amputated.
The last person who was brought out alive was not removed until around 13 hours after the accident. 43 people were killed, including the train driver, and 74 others were injured seriously enough to need hospital treatment in this disaster. The majority of victims were taken for treatment to the London Hospital. Others went to St Bartholomew's and Guy's Hospitals. An emergency operating area was erected on the platform and this was attended by doctors and nurses from local hospitals. Many life saving operations had to be carried out on passengers in the carriages before they could be removed. Many of those died due to suffocation as they were pinned unable to breathe in the crushed coaches, several more subsequently died from severe injuries, in what was the greatest loss of life on the Underground in peacetime.
The cause of the crash was never discovered. Some say it was the driver committing suicide, others say he suffered a heart attack; whatever caused it may never be known. It took crews five days to remove and recover the body of the train driver.
The crash had two outcomes. Firstly, the southern end of the Northern Line platforms (where the crash occurred) had a major rebuild. Secondly, an automatic system for stopping trains was introduced in dead end tunnels on the tube. These operate whether or not the driver operates the brakes on the train. These systems are called "The Moorgate Control".
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