Remembering the Basel air crash

Fifty years ago this month, villages right across the Mendips and beyond were shattered by the cruellest of events, one that became known worldwide as the Swiss air disaster. Ian Tabrett, a journalist living near Axbridge, knew many of the victims and those who helped at the emergency centre set up after the crash.

IN A blinding snowstorm an airliner which had left Bristol airport a couple of hours before, tore into a dense forest on a mountainside near the town of Hochwald, killing 108 passengers and crew. Incredibly, 37 survived despite the terrible conditions.

Most of those on board that April morning in 1973 were mothers and children from Axbridge, Cheddar, Congresbury, Wrington and Yatton, happily looking forward to a day of shopping and sightseeing in Basel.

But the blizzard, faults in the plane’s navigation instruments, mistakes by the pilots who in the end had no idea where they were, and confusion in the airport control tower led to the terrible crash.

One teenager managed to free himself and, finding signs of life among the wreckage, pulled his mother and six others to safety. But because of the appalling weather, several hours passed before rescuers arrived.

They could only use 4x4 vehicles, but even they had to be pulled by tractors or pushed by hand.

Communication with the outside world was, to today’s world, primitive and slow: no mobile phones, satellite links or computers. Certainly no social media. It all had to be done by old-fashioned telephone lines connected by operators, or by what was known as telex – the equivalent of today’s emails.

For people back in Somerset, facts about what had happened and who had survived or died were scarce to come by, and because of the communication problems, were sometimes wildly inaccurate.

Yet very quickly members of local Rotary, Round Table and Lions International clubs came together to set up an emergency co-ordination centre at the Oak House restaurant in Axbridge Square.

The small army of volunteers then began an operation that was to go on round the clock for months, and to a lessening extent, for years. Their first and main concern, and most urgent task was the welfare and needs of the survivors, the stricken families back home and the 80 or so children affected.

When the centre was finally run-down almost three years later, a little-publicised report was drawn up by the full-time secretary Margaret Tucker giving an hour-by-hour account of the unbelievable workload, the heart-breaking decisions, and the care and love which was needed by all those involved.

The tasks facing the volunteers – the report reveals they received some help from the professionals, but never enough –were immense. Priority was given to the identification and repatriation of those who had died, plus arranging for relatives to fly out to Switzerland.

Money and offers of help poured in. They had to organise dozens of home-helps, buy washing machines for those who didn’t have them, arrange school meals. One unexpected job was distributing a donation of Easter eggs.

The report admits to mistakes and occasional tensions, and recommends actions in case of future such events. There have been memorial services, but the painful memories have never gone away.

That brave teenage rescuer perhaps best summed up feelings in an interview a few years ago: "We came back physically alive, but part of us didn't. We're still there. The mountain's scarred and we're scarred, and that won't go.”

Various events are planned to commemorate the crash.