MINOR ACCIDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 March 1943, Page 4

MINOR ACCIDENT

RESPONSIBLE FOR LONDON TUBE DISASTER PEOPLE PRESS INTO STAIRWAY. NOT KNOWING IT WAS BLOCKED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) RUGBY, March 4. According to accounts available of the London tube disaster, shortly after an alert had sounded, substantial numbers of people were making their way as usual towards the shelter entrance. There were nearly 2,000 persons in the shelter when an elderly woman, burdened with a bundle and a baby, tripped near the foot of a flight of nineteen Steps, leading'down from the street and terminating in a landing. The woman fell down two or three steps and lay on the landing. Her fall tripped an elderly man, who fell similarly, and their bodies tripped those behind. Within a few seconds a large number of people were lying on the lower steps and landing, completely blocking the stairway. Those coming in from the street could not see what had taken place and continued to press down the stanrway, and within a’few minutes hundreds of people were crushed together and lying on top of one another. By the time it was possible to extricate the bodies it was found that a total, at present estimated at 178, were dead, and that 60 were in need of hospital treatment. There was no sign of panic before the accident, and no bomb fell in the vicinity.