Ed Helicopter Crashes into Glasgow Pub

[Craig B]

I suspect practically anywhere in that immediate vicinity except that one spot, and it would have crashed without involving anyone on the ground. Rolfe.

I don't agree. There's a large red sandstone tenement building within a few yards, just across Bridgegate. And new housing in Goosedubbs lane and Howard Street.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Do you think the roof would have been unusually weak as a result? Though I suppose something like that would probably break through many roofs.

Rolfe.

If it's held up to years of snow, then no, it's not unusually weak.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't agree. There's a large red sandstone tenement building within a few yards, just across Bridgegate. And new housing in Goosedubbs lane and Howard Street.

I didn't realise there was residential property quite so close.

If it's held up to years of snow, then no, it's not unusually weak.

Fair point. I just wondered how the conversion of a ceiling into a roof was carried out when the flats were removed from above the pub.

Rolfe.

 

[Craig B]

I didn't realise there was residential property quite so close.




Fair point. I just wondered how the conversion of a ceiling into a roof was carried out when the flats were removed from above the pub.

Rolfe.

Yes and the Carrick development on the Clyde where the old clipper ship was. I don't know how strong these new flat roofs have to be.

 

[Nessie]

Do you think the roof would have been unusually weak as a result? Though I suppose something like that would probably break through many roofs.

Rolfe.

Yes, the flat roofed pubs often just made use of the floor boards that had been there between them and the flat above. You can see in images of the crash scene there is felt, a wood frame and then that would have had the plaster of the ceiling below, hence all the reports of dust. The space may have still had the ash which was used to help sound proof the pub from the flat above, traditionally owned by the pub because of the noise.

The roof would have strong enough to walk on and the felt would be replaced every so often. But it is not load bearing and being flat the copter just lands on it rather than ant chance of it sliding at least partially off.

 

[Cylinder]

The problem is the weight of the helicopter and cargo is focused on the skids. Hammer the same to a thin sheet, place that on the roof and I'm guessing nothing happens. Local roof failures tend to cascade as supports for adjacent members fail.

Or, as my brother used to tell me, you can't just hang a 2x4 in midair.

 

[Nessie]

I see from posts above that there is load bearing as it a flat roof that can cope with being walked on and the weather and load bearing as in you build on top of it or do what happened in Estonia with the shopping centre and build a roof garden. The Clutha is the former.

 

[Mudcat]

I think the title of this thread is a very apt skewer of the annoying and endless "responsible gun owner" threads. It makes a great point: any human invention, any device or technology can and will be misused by a certain number of people and accidents will happen.

This is true but the large majority of devices that can potentially cause a lot of deaths are typically under strict control. Helicopters, for example, require special licenses to pilot and are subject to governmental control, intense safety requirements, and severe restrictions, to say nothing about the intense scrutiny that helicopter pilots fall under.

But for gun owners gun rights are special and outweigh public safety. Guns are sacred. Guns are good. Guns are all. Guns. Guns. Guuunnnsss...

 

[Parsman]

What's wrong with the title?

I've been using message boards, BBSes, IRC, etc since the early 90's and in all that time I've never felt that I couldn't handle seeing someone else express themselves. I'm frankly baffled by the level of moderation which takes place here... but I am encouraged that they're ignoring you on this point.

I think the title of this thread is a very apt skewer of the annoying and endless "responsible gun owner" threads. It makes a great point: any human invention, any device or technology can and will be misused by a certain number of people and accidents will happen. Sifting through the news to find them in order to make a point about how other people who actually *are* being responsible with said device should lose access to it, is absurd.

What is wrong with it is this. The helicopter failed. It did not perform as it should. Because of this it crashed, a disaster for those on board and those it crashed on. But it was NOT caused by a "responsible" pilot using the helicopter as it was intended.

"Responsible" gun owners kill people with a tool DESIGNED to inflict damage and death. The fact that it can also be used by the more sane members of the gun loving fraternity for target practice is a benign side issue. Guns were invented to maim, to kill. Thus when someone kills another human being with a gun, they are using it to carry out one of its primary purposes. It has not failed.

 

[Newtons Bit]

I didn't realise there was residential property quite so close.




Fair point. I just wondered how the conversion of a ceiling into a roof was carried out when the flats were removed from above the pub.

Rolfe.

It would actually be a conversion of a floor into a roof. Floors for a flat should be capable of carrying more load than a typical roof in a low snow region like Glasgow.

Roofs and floors are typically designed for a evenly distributed load and/or what I call the "drunken idiot load" (in the US, a 300lb moron jumping around). Cylinder has correctly pointed out that the load of the helicopter is concentrated into a small point, and the framing is not capable of resisting it.

The helicopter penetrating the building would have happened with any typical wood framed construction. A building constructed out of concrete or steel might have had a better chance but it's really hard to know for sure.

 

[newyorkguy]

Gordon Smart, the editor of the Scottish Sun newspaper, has just been on the BBC news saying that he saw the helicopter falling out of the sky "nose over tail" so from that I infer that the pilot had little or no control over where he was going to land.

All three people in the helicopter - the civilian pilot and two policemen - and five people in the pub. I hope that's the final total. Something like 14 very seriously injured in hospital though. I'm not clear they've actually managed to get the bodies out of the rubble yet - "very challenging circumstances"...

When I logged off last night (EST) it seemed like maybe this wasn't too bad. Since then it has become clear this was a horrendous crash. What a shame on a Friday night when people are gathered to have a good time.

Sounds like some kind of catastrophic failure on the helicopter. An old nightmare of mine. Falling from the sky. Wow.

 

[Rolfe]

When I logged off last night (EST) it seemed like maybe this wasn't too bad. Since then it has become clear this was a horrendous crash. What a shame on a Friday night when people are gathered to have a good time.

Sounds like some kind of catastrophic failure on the helicopter. An old nightmare of mine. Falling from the sky. Wow.

Due to my intense research into the Lockerbie disaster, and the upcoming 25th anniversary of that in only three weeks - planning to go to commemoration services in the town and so on - I've been a bit prone to nightmares about aircraft falling out of the sky on to unsuspecting people on the ground.

It doesn't happen often, but it's catastrophic when it does. It certainly seems as if it has been a catastrophic failure of the helicopter. Unless the pilot had a catastrophic heart attack or something like that?

Rolfe.

 

[Cylinder]

That's not to say the helicopter attempted a landing as opposed to impacting terrain. That part's not clear. The idea is the same, though - the area of the load is as important as the mass of the load itself.

 

[Craig B]

It would actually be a conversion of a floor into a roof. Floors for a flat should be capable of carrying more load than a typical roof in a low snow region like Glasgow.

Glasgow is an average low snow region. For US readers, the climate is comparable with the Pacific North West. More rain than snow. But once or twice a decade we get a "continental" winter, and very heavy snowfalls occur. Any construction intended to last for a few decades had better be able to resist the occasional snowy season.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Strathclyde police have an unfortunate record with helicopters.

I think this is their third accident. I don't know how typical that is for police use of helicopters. They do tend to spend a lot of time hovering over built-up areas- and counter intuitively, hovering is not what helicopters are designed for.

Whatever happened here sounds like major failure. The descriptions of it falling out of the sky sound like autorotation was not even possible. Sounds like the whole rotor linkage just ...stopped. Total gearbox crack-up maybe?

After the multiple north sea Super Puma failures and now this, I wonder if we will see tightened regulation of chopper flight over built up areas?

Ten years since I was last in the Clutha.

Bloody awful business.

 

[newyorkguy]

If I can I'd like to add a current news link from a U.S. TV station.

Was this helicopter on a routine police patrol? Many of the big cities in the U.S. (including the one I live in) have them.

My nightmare about "falling from the sky" was a wide-awake one. I served in a U.S. Army helicopter unit in Viet-Nam and flew missions. The funny thing was, I never worried too much about safety on the helicopter. They are so powerful, when that main rotor is turning you feel the vibration in every bone. That's reassuring. Plus I knew the pilots. I had head phones on. I knew that they were very alert and cautious and that they knew what they were doing. I could hear it. Again, very reassuring.

It was flying home on the big commercial airliners that sometimes scared me. I don't know what's going on in the cockpit. Who the flight crew is. And when you feel those big jets slowing in midair...time to grip the armrest! Are we supposed to be slowing?

 

[newyorkguy]

Gordon Smart, the editor of the Scottish Sun newspaper reportedly said he saw the helicopter falling out of the sky "nose over tail." A news editor is a trained observer so I give his account a lot of weight.

Nose-over-tail means the ship is totally out-of-control. Something failed and did so catastrophically. Nothing the crew can do then except say a prayer.

 

[jj]

That's not to say the helicopter attempted a landing as opposed to impacting terrain. That part's not clear. The idea is the same, though - the area of the load is as important as the mass of the load itself.

And the velocity may not help, either. It sounds like this copter was broken well before it hit, if it was tail first.

 

[Craig B]

Gordon Smart, the editor of the Scottish Sun newspaper reportedly said he saw the helicopter falling out of the sky "nose over tail." A news editor is a trained observer so I give his account a lot of weight.

That may or may not apply to the news editor of that particular journal.

 

[Rolfe]

Strathclyde police have an unfortunate record with helicopters.

I think this is their third accident. I don't know how typical that is for police use of helicopters. They do tend to spend a lot of time hovering over built-up areas- and counter intuitively, hovering is not what helicopters are designed for.

Whatever happened here sounds like major failure. The descriptions of it falling out of the sky sound like autorotation was not even possible. Sounds like the whole rotor linkage just ...stopped. Total gearbox crack-up maybe?

After the multiple north sea Super Puma failures and now this, I wonder if we will see tightened regulation of chopper flight over built up areas?

Ten years since I was last in the Clutha.

Bloody awful business.

This history was what provoked the comment made to me on Calton Hill in September. A police helicopter hovering over a close-packed crowd of 20,000 - 30,000.

The editor of the Sun said he saw it falling vertically, I think he said nose-over-tail. However, someone did come on-screen and caution about the accuracy of eye-witness accounts of things the witness was unused to seeing and which were very shocking. This may have been in response to one newspaper which reported eyewitness accounts of an explosion and a fireball - which thankfully didn't happen or a lot more people would probably have been killed. It was pitch dark of course, and street lights make it hard to see anything coming down from above.

Rolfe.