Helicopter Crash at the Clutha Bar

It is inevitable that aircraft will crash from time to time, many have simple problems that can be rectified and prevent a reoccurrence but other times the cause of such a crash may need a lot of work to investigate what happened in order to find a cause. One such incident is the tragic crash of a police helicopter in 2013.

The Scottish city of Glasgow is one of the busiest places in the United Kingdom and third most densely populated and one of the things that attracts people is the nightlife and the range of old style pubs that seem to be on every corner. At the edge of the River Clyde at the Gorbels Street Bridge is a bar that looks from a distance to have had its top floor sheered off and a temporary roof in its place, entry into the pub confirms that this did indeed have further floors in its heyday with a set of stairs leading to nothing. This had been the result of a fire in the 1960s and the building having several storeys removed, but this particular venue now would become infamous for what happened this one particular night.

On the evening of Friday 29^th November 2013 a police helicopter was scanning the streets of the city looking for evidence of earlier reports of a trespasser before being retasked to Dalkeith. After completing its mission the pilot and his two police officers on board were given clearance to land at Glasgow City Heliport and this is where the aircraft was heading.

Meanwhile in the Clutha bar a band was playing to the crowd as is normal for a Friday night here, normality is live music on the stage and everybody generally having a good time, regulars mixing with those that have just come in for a quick pint. Then in an instant, all hell broke loose. The time was 2222 hours and Glasgow was about to make national headlines for the wrong reasons.

The roof of the Clutha collapsed on top of the customers and smoke filled the rooms, masonry and brickwork flying everywhere as people became trapped under rubble, injured people struggling to get out in the suddenness of what was happening. At this point nobody knew, but the police helicopter flying overheard and dropped like a stone above the pub and plunged through the flat roof into the crowded bar.

Glasgow emergency services were immediately on scene, fleets of ambulances turning up and taking stunned and injured to hospital, so many more needed recovering from the rubble, the fire teams working into the night, but by now it was obvious that all three had died in the helicopter and there were several more dead within the bar.

The following morning the daylight showed the extent of the damage, the helicopter sticking out of the roof at a crazy angle and dozens of people waiting nearby for news of their friends, some of whom were still missing. When the rescue operation turned into a recovery, they found that seven of the pubgoers had been killed.

An investigation revealed that a low fuel warning had been ignored and that the engines had been starved of the little fuel remaining after the fuel transfer switch had been deactivated for some unknown reason.

The Clutha pub reopened and is today still frequented by drinkers and the live music continues. There is no plaque to the ten people who died that night, but for those whose lived were affected by this tragic event, it will be a long time before this disaster fades from the memory of the Glaswegians. The bar itself shows no evidence that anything on such a scale ever happened, but for those who were there that night, the name Clutha will forever live in the hearts of those who lost loved ones on that Friday night in the winter of 2013.