Last updated at 12:04, Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Maxwell Kerr was sitting alone at his kitchen table when his home suddenly began to shake. The market town of Lockerbie was now the centre of an horrific international disaster.

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People from 21 nations were dead. Mr Kerr, who has lived in Lockerbie his entire life and was awarded the British Empire Medal for his work the year after the disaster, said: “There was no problem getting anyone to help.

It was just after 7pm on a windy winter’s night and the electricity worker had been sheltered inside his house in Rosebank, Lockerbie, when the tremor struck.

As ornaments around him began rattling, he lurched from his seat and ran to his front door to find out what was going on.

“The sky was bright orange. I could feel the heat on my arms and face, looking towards this sky,” he said.

“This was obviously the fuel and the wing heading over to Sherwood Crescent.

“I ran back in because I didn’t have a clue what had happened. By the time I got to the back door, it had gone. I could see the flames at Sherwood.

“I went back to the front of the house and my neighbour said ‘did you see those wheels going over the roof?’ I asked ‘what wheels?’ He said ‘the aircraft wheels. They flew over the roof’.

“One or two of us went to the top of the hill. It was dark in Park Place because the electricity had been hit. We found plastic containers from the aircraft.

“At first I had thought it had been a low-flying exercise aircraft that had crashed, but then we found the containers, papers and the first few bodies.”

For Mr Kerr and other Lockerbie residents the harsh reality of the disaster unfolding before them was becoming clear.

A Boeing 747 jumbo jet flying from London to New York – Pan Am flight 103 – had exploded mid-air and crash-landed on the town.

A section of the aircraft had plunged into the Sherwood Crescent area, destroying homes and leaving a massive crater. Houses there were on fire, flames were licking pipes that pumped fuel at a nearby filling station.

More large parts of the plane had fallen on other parts of the town – including Rosebank, where Mr Kerr lived, and neighbouring Park Place.

The aircraft’s nosecone, bearing the name Maid of the Seas, was discovered crumpled on a hillside at Tundergarth, above Lockerbie – one of the most striking news images of the 20th century.

Wreckage would later be found as far as 60 miles away.

In the hours and days that followed it was confirmed that all 259 passengers and crew on-board had been killed, along with 11 Lockerbie residents.

Chilling news flashes – never to be forgotten by those who saw them in this region – told millions worldwide that a transatlantic liner had crashed.

But this was no accident. It was an act of terrorism that would trigger a worldwide manhunt to trace those responsible.

A massive rescue and recovery operation was launched as eyewitnesses reported a tremendous bang, massive fireball and liquid fire falling from the skies.

For Mr Kerr, his priority was the welfare of family and friends.

At the moment the aircraft exploded, his wife was out working at the town’s ice rink and his daughter had driven to the petrol station close to the blazing houses.

When he first saw the flames from towards Sherwood, he feared the station may have been hit.

“The main worry for me was my daughter, Caroline, because she was in the car,” Mr Kerr said.

“She had moved off from there and along the street. That was when it happened. She headed to a friend of ours.”

Although Mr Kerr’s closest relatives and friends were well, he knew most of the 11 Lockerbie people killed at Sherwood.

Unsurprisingly, there were no Christmas celebrations in the town that year.

Mr Kerr, now aged 72, said: “On Christmas Day there were no lights or trees. We took our decorations down.

“The kids did not go out to play. We could not do that with what had happened – the horror and problems.

“We also had to remember the families who had come over from America, as well as those from here.

“I remember sitting and I could see the cranes lifting the fuselage from the street in Park Place.”

In the week that followed the disaster, Mr Kerr played a key role, becoming chairman of a residents’ group for the Rosebank and Park Place area.

It opened a drop-in centre where people could go to get things off their chest and come to terms with what had happened.

Members of the group did what they could to tidy the town, including painting swings in a park before children returned to play there.

“People pulled together. Everyone was relieved to be alive and that more people had not been killed.

“We remember the 11 from the town who died, but it could have been a lot more.”

One of his main memories of the disaster remains the international media that descended on the town.

“It was chaos. The population doubled, maybe trebled, overnight – reporters and cameras. I remember the amount of people, the amount of tackle.”

He later became part of a group that worked to help minimise the impact of the massive media interest on townsfolk.

Mr Kerr, who now lives at Sherwood Park in one of the 15 destroyed homes that had to be rebuilt in that area, admitted it did not take him long to get over what he saw on the night of the crash.

But he said: “There are some who still have nightmares.

“Some of the young soldiers who came still have nightmares because of what they saw.

“They talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was murder on mass scale – 270 people dead in one go.”

Carlisle paramedic Glenn Wilson was on his way to the pub when he began to suspect something serious had happened.

He was walking through Caldewgate when two ambulances from the city raced past him in quick succession, followed by one from Wigton then a mobile command unit used only for major emergencies.

Curious about what was going on, he went into a telephone box opposite the Globe Inn and called Cumbria’s control room. It was about 7pm. The duty officer told him they had received reports of an explosion and an aircraft coming down on Lockerbie.

They didn’t then know what kind of plane it was, but were appealing for off-duty personnel to go to work.

Glenn immediately reported for duty. He and a colleague were soon driving up the virtually gridlocked A74.

He recalled: “We noticed a coach-load of policemen and started to realise it must be something pretty heavy.

“Finally, we got near Lockerbie.

“The initial thing we could see was an orange glow in the sky above the town and a quite tremendous pall of smoke.

“There was a huge piece of aircraft under-carriage in the carriageway that dwarfed the traffic around it.

“We gradually worked our way through the traffic and got to Lockerbie itself.

“There was debris everywhere. I remember saying this must have been what part of London was like during the blitz. I could see sporadic fires burning all over the place.

“We got to the town centre. It was full of police vehicles, fire engines and was generally chaotic. There were people everywhere – civilians and emergency services. There seemed to be miles of fire hoses.”

A police sergeant sent Glenn and his colleague to Lockerbie Ice Rink, which would later be used as a temporary mortuary but was at that point a base for ambulance crews dispatched to the town.

There was a 14-strong team from Cumbria Ambulance Service there – from Carlisle, Wigton, Penrith and their control room – and others from as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Dozens of ambulances were parked at the ice rink. All their crews could do was wait to be called upon – but there was nothing they could do.

“It was quite surreal,” said Glenn, who has worked for the ambulance service since 1984. “We were all sitting following events on TV – just like the rest of the nation – even though we were in Lockerbie.

“Sadly, we were not needed.”

Glenn, now 49, initially imagined having to help deal with hundreds of casualties as he headed to Lockerbie, but apart from the dead, there were few people seriously injured. He said: “It was quite daunting not knowing exactly what we were going to.”

Cumbrian police officers and firefighters were also dispatched north in response to the disaster.

Twenty-five firefighters from Longtown, Carlisle and Brampton were sent to Lockerbie. Off-duty firemen manned Carlisle fire station while six city firemen manned Gretna’s base.

Dog handlers from Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team helped with the search for bodies, while members of the WRVS in Cumbria were among the volunteers who looked after rescue workers.

Staff from Carlisle Airport also worked around-the-clock, landing 76 planes during the first 24 hours.

Officers, medics, firefighters and police from Carlisle’s former RAF 14MU base joined the search and established a communications network. The base was used as a refuelling site for helicopters.

First published at 11:23, Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk