THE death of a woman spectator at the demolition of two tower blocks
at Queen Elizabeth Square in the Gorbals, Glasgow, will lead to an
overhaul of public safety at demolitions, a fatal accident inquiry heard
yesterday.
Explosives expert Peter McGoff, 58, chairman of the British Standards
Institution for the safe use of explosives in the construction industry,
said meetings had been going on about revising safety since the death of
61-year-old Mrs Helen Tinney. There should soon be new guidelines to
increase measures at high-rise demolitions in urban areas.
Mr McGoff told the inquiry at Glasgow Sheriff Court into the fatal
accident on September 12 last year that urban demolitions on this scale
often drew huge crowds.
He said: ''If something goes wrong, and that is always possible with
explosives, then distance is the best safeguard.'' The bigger the crowd,
the more chance of injury.
He thought the demolition industry had to get back to basic
engineering principles and look at methods of collapse and protection
from the blast, and emphasised the need to look again at safe distances
and secure areas for viewers.
He told Mr Steele Carnegie, leading the evidence: ''I think in future
we will be looking at a three-part system.''
He explained that this would firstly involve a drop zone, where the
building would collapse, then a danger zone, and these would be
comparable to the present exclusion zone. But, in addition, a third
security zone for additional distance from the blast would be
introduced.
The inquiry heard earlier that Mrs Tinney, of Hutchesontown Court,
Gorbals, had been standing beyond a zone closed off for safety.
0 In his closing speech, Mr Carnegie asked Sheriff Archibald McKay to
find that Mrs Tinney had been struck by debris ejected from the
buildings by explosives.
He also asked that recommendations be made that the British Standards
committees reconsider the exclusion zone, with particular reference to
what Mr McGoff had said, and he asked the sheriff to recommend that
chartered engineers should be in charge of these projects and that
Glasgow District Council have professional auditing of such contracts
done.
Sheriff McKay will give his findings in writing at a later date.
