A body has been
recovered from Didcot Power Station's collapsed boiler house, police have
revealed.
Thames Valley Police
the remains were found in the collapsed boiler house during the search for
three workers trapped underneath 20,000 tonnes of rubble.
The remainder of the
turbine hall, half of which collapsed unexpectedly in February, was brought
down by explosive experts using remote-controlled robots .
Robots are being
used in the search. The previous one had to be halted in May over safety fears.
Demolition workers
Ken Cresswell, 57, and John Shaw, 61, both from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, and
Chris Huxtable, 34, from Swansea, were trapped under 20,000 tonnes of debris
when the 10-storey structure crumbled on February 23.
Four people died in
the disaster, but only one body, that of machine operator Michael Collings, 53,
from Brotton in Teesside, had previously been recovered.
The site was being
readied for demolition when disaster struck but investigators still do not know
why the building fell.
A remote demolition
brought down the remainder of the decommissioned site at around 6am on Sunday.
The team had to use
robots to place their explosives because the standing half of the building was
too unstable to go near.
A Thames Valley Police spokesman
said: “The absolute priority remains the recovery of the missing men so they
can be returned to their families and to understand what caused this tragic
incident.”
Roland Alford,
explosives contractor at the Oxfordshire power station, defended the four-month
delay in completing the demolition.
He said: “There has
been quite a lot of criticism about delays, questioning why it has taken so
long to get to this point, but the fact is nothing like this has ever been
attempted before and this is not a simple demolition.
“We have been
working on it night and day since March and built up quite a sizeable team of
very expert people to work on this, to come up with the charges, the methods of
doing it and training.”
He added: “It was
almost unthinkable to send people to work underneath there and place charges,
given the fact the building could come down at any moment - you can’t justify
that.”
Roads and trains
were halted in the surrounding area while the demolition took place and the
noise could be heard for miles around.
Source: Mirror.co. uk
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