by John Hackett
Those who had suffered the most agonizing effects of the heat-wave were mercifully killed by the blast-wave that followed. People who had been indoors were now buried beneath mountains of rubble and suffered a similar fate. Within three or four kilometres of Winson Green very few people survived the immediate effects of the detonation. Outside this range, and up to about seven or eight kilometres away, the collapse and destruction of most buildings trapped people in hundreds under fallen masonry. There were many deaths and severe injuries beyond counting. The air was full of flying objects, picked up by winds moving outwards from Winson Green at speeds which, even at ranges of four or five kilometres, approached 500 kilometres per hour. The wind drove along objects standing in its path like confetti. Motor cars and other vehicles were bowled over and over, carried tens and even hundreds of metres from where they were. People caught in the open were picked up, flung through the air and dashed against any solid object in their path. Roof tiles, pieces of masonry and any loose objects were projected through the air like missiles, smashing their way through obstructions and causing injury to many. At distances greater than seven or eight kilometres from the centre damage levels began to fall off, but even so all lightweight structures were blown over, roofs were blown off and higher masonry buildings suffered extensive damage. Large amounts of rubble and masonry fell into the streets and all windows were blown out, much of the glass being converted into missiles with much injury to people in the way.
A minor benefit of the blast-wave was that some of the innumerable fires started a few seconds earlier were blown out and did not rekindle. This was small mercy, however, compared with the even larger number of fires which were effectively fanned by the outward moving winds.
Birmingham airport, twelve kilometres from Winson Green, suffered relatively light damage, but wind speeds at the airport were of the order of 160 kilometres per hour and many aircraft lost wings and tailplanes or were turned on their sides by the blast-wave. Outside this range the effects of blast fell off rapidly, damage to buildings being confined to broken windows and shifted roof tiles.
The blast-wave had rolled outwards from the centre at something like the speed of sound, arriving at Birmingham airport approximately thirty seconds after the detonation of the weapon. Even at this point the roar of the explosion was stupendous, lasting for ten to fifteen seconds. The same roar was to be heard in London, approximately eight minutes later, as a rumbling, roaring noise from the direction in which the blinding flash of the fireball had been seen eight minutes earlier. Those in London with any knowledge of nuclear weapons were in no doubt as to what had happened.
Within one minute the stupendous activity of immediate damage from the detonation had ceased. The enormous mushroom cloud above the totally devastated centre of Birmingham had risen to a height of fifteen kilometres and had spread across a diameter of approximately twenty kilometres. It cast its shadow over a scene of extraordinary destruction, where everything was still except for the occasional crash of falling masonry and the crackle of multitudinous fires. Within a radius of five kilometres of Winson Green everything seemed to be on fire. Outside this area, to a range of about eight kilometres, hardly any building, or what survived of it, seemed to be free of a fire of some sort. Fires occurred less frequently outside this range though there were buildings on fire at ranges of up to fifteen kilometres. There were fires in towns as far away as Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Halesowen, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall and Brownhills.
The devastation within the centre of Birmingham was so intense that the road system had ceased to have any meaning, most roads having totally disappeared beneath the rubble of the buildings once standing along them. Outside this area, and to a range of five or six kilometres, all roads were totally blocked by fallen masonry. The only means of movement around the area was provided by the M5 and M6 motorways which encircle the centre of Birmingham. These roads, being wide and not hemmed in by buildings, remained relatively free of obstruction. The bridges along them had also survived remarkably well. Outside the motorway route the degree of devastation began to tail off, although most buildings still appeared to be unusable. Almost all roads were so littered with rubble that no immediate movement of vehicles was possible. The centres of Dudley, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Halesowen were impassable, though in these towns the outline of the road system was still visible and the overall extent of the damage, though still enormous, was considerably less than in the centre of Birmingham. Fires were prolific, particularly in commercial premises in high streets and commercial centres, holding large stocks of inflammable materials. In many places the gas distribution network had been broken and fires were being fed by escaping gas.
The fires which were now alight across a circle with a radius of approximately fifteen kilometres centred on Winson Green were beginning everywhere to take hold. In particular the fires amongst the devastated remains of the centre of Birmingham were beginning to burn fiercely. As the flames rose higher into the sky air was drawn in from outside, with the result that winds began to blow inwards towards the flames. This further fanned the conflagration so that, within twenty minutes of the original detonation, an area of approximately thirty square kilometres in the centre of Birmingham was totally engulfed in a fire-storm. The flames and smoke rose hundreds of metres into the sky as the in-rush of air fed and fanned the fires. The in-blowing air prevented fires moving outwards but everything within the fire-storm area was now engulfed by it. Outside the area of the fire-storm thousands of other fires were burning furiously. In peacetime many of these would have been regarded as serious fires requiring the attentions of a significant proportion of the fire-fighting effort available locally. As it was there were so many such fires burning at once over a total area of about 600 square kilometres that conventional fire-fighting equipment could have little or no effect upon them.
The human casualties resulting from the detonation of the nuclear weapon were horrific. The day had been a sunny one, so that many people were lightly dressed and therefore susceptible to burn injuries on their exposed skin. The centre of Birmingham had been crowded with shoppers and others going about their normal business. Fortunately, schools were empty and some people were away on holiday. Nevertheless, a population of approximately 2 million, including that of Birmingham and its surrounding towns, was exposed to the holocaust. Of this population approximately 300,000 were killed within minutes by the heat and blast effects of the weapon or were subsequently to die unattended by any medical or rescue team. A further 250,000 received blast or burn injuries of a very serious nature, in need of urgent hospital treatment. Another 500,000 received lighter injuries which could conceivably be treated either by themselves or with first aid. Only a very small proportion of the population within the Birmingham area was entirely free of injury. The medical and hospital facilities available to support this catastrophic level of casualty were themselves savagely weakened.
Half the hospitals in the area were either destroyed or rendered totally unusable by the explosion. Of the remainder only a quarter were able to function as normal whilst the rest had suffered damage which severely limited their ability to cope with more than their original patient load. Doctors and ambulance services had suffered casualties in proportion to that of the civil population and so were hardly able to cope with an emergency. By any measure the enormous numbers of people requiring medical assistance so swamped the remaining medical facilities that the help these were able to give was almost negligible. In addition to the physical and human destruction, many of the survivors within the area were suffering from severe shock. They were helpless and in no position either to help themselves or to organize any form of co-ordinated help for others.
The fire-fighting services had also been severely disrupted, almost three-quarters of the fire-fighting equipment within Birmingham itself having been destroyed. Most of the firemen who responded to the emergency by making their way to their fire stations found that their equipment was either
buried or so damaged as to be unusable, while those who were able to get their appliances out found that they were quite unable to move them along the roads. Additionally, there were so many fires burning that any sort of priority was almost impossible to decide upon. Those nearest to the fire stations received what little effort was available. Within Birmingham and its close environs the firemen who were able to deploy equipment found that the water distribution system had suffered so much damage that hydrant pressures were inadequate to support any real fire-fighting capacity. This was not the case in the surrounding towns, however, where subterranean water systems had remained undisturbed and where effective pressures were available.
Within the city of Birmingham central administration and organization had virtually ceased to exist. Normal telephone communication systems linking police, fire-fighting services, medical facilities and local administration had all been destroyed. In the preceding week a Sub-Regional Headquarters had been established at the government offices in South Yardley. These offices were approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion but they were of modern infill construction and had suffered considerable damage as a result of the blast. As offices they were generally unusable and, more important, all telephone communication had been destroyed. The personnel manning the headquarters were relatively unscathed but, having at first no form of communication with outside agencies, even by road, they were unable to co-ordinate any activity. It was some time before emergency radio communication, from what was left of local and public utility radio, together with RAYNET Ham Stations (the net of amateur or ‘ham’ radio stations), could begin to help.
A further problem was the total failure of electrical power in the Birmingham area. The widespread destruction of electrical distribution systems had led to the automatic cut-out of supply, and destruction was so widespread that the distribution system throughout that area of the Midlands centred on Birmingham had been affected. Many of the power stations supplying the area had automatically shut down as their imposed load had ceased to exist. Thus the whole of Birmingham, with its surrounding towns, was without electricity.
Spontaneous attempts at fire-fighting, rescue and the giving of medical attention to the injured developed within minutes of the detonation. But, being spontaneous and limited, the efforts were soon totally disorganized as calls for assistance flooded into whatever remained of the emergency service co-ordination centres. It was some hours before the initial shock had subsided sufficiently for any attempt at local organization to take place. In Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Solihull, Walsall and Halesowen public utility communication systems had survived to some degree and were at least able to report the extent of local damage and casualties. These towns had been hit hard, with very extensive damage to buildings and with large numbers of fires. A great many of their inhabitants had suffered extensive burn or blast injuries and needed urgent medical attention. Their fire-fighting, ambulance and medical collection services had survived reasonably intact and were available to the local authority. The biggest problem these services faced was that of moving their equipment around streets blocked with rubble. In addition, the extent of fire was sometimes so great that entire areas had to be completely avoided. Most of these towns had taken some elementary precautions of a civil defence nature during the first days of war, even if they had not done something earlier, including the stockpiling of earth-moving machinery capable of clearing rubble off the main roads. They were thus able to clear routes through the centres of the towns so that emergency services equipment could be deployed, generally to the town or city centres, where the worst devastation had been caused, where fires were burning most fiercely, and where the majority of casualties had also occurred. The vast numbers of fires elsewhere in these towns had to go unheeded. So did most of the casualties, lying unattended. The extent of damage and casualty in these towns was so great that the local authorities were overwhelmed by their problems and could spare no thought for assistance to areas outside their own.
Towns closer to the centre of Birmingham, such as Dudley, which was approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion, had fared much worse than the towns in the outer ring. Dudley’s town centre was ablaze in many parts, while movement of fire and rescue appliances along its roads was severely handicapped and in many cases impossible. Again, a few items of earth-moving equipment had been assembled before the war and these now attempted to clear their way through the worst of the rubble. Many buildings had collapsed. People were trapped but little rescue effort was available. The local authority emergency services had remained reasonably intact but most of the telephone communication system had broken down; it was thus impossible to organize centrally any form of rescue effort. Rescue work continued on an ad hoc basis but was hopelessly inadequate to meet the town’s needs; this was also the case in other nearby towns like Halesowen, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Solihull. These towns were in the worst state of any in the area. Large numbers of those still alive had suffered severe injuries. Emergency services existed in some form or other but without organization. The towns struggling for survival in surrounding areas could provide no form of help to those in the inner ring. Still closer to the point of detonation conditions were so bad that no help was available at all. Thus the towns in the worst condition of all were left to their own devices. This was where help was most urgently needed. As it was, there was none.
Within the motorway boundaries the position inside the city of Birmingham itself soon became quite unmanageable. Movement was virtually impossible. Although the fire-storm itself had abated, fires still raged throughout the area. The area was a wilderness in which no help was to be had, surrounded by towns quite incapable of providing any.
As the day wore on Wolverhampton and Solihull continued to struggle with the impossible task facing their rescue and fire-fighting facilities. Most of the fires had to be allowed to burn themselves out. Rescue attempts were made where resources were available and where it appeared that some benefit would result. In many places no attempt could be made to rescue people trapped inside fallen buildings or to provide medical attention to the injured. Inevitably this meant that many people trapped in buildings died either as a result of the spread of fire or from the injuries they had received earlier.
By the end of the day on 20 August an area of 600 square kilometres centred on Birmingham was a scene still lit by innumerable fires burning themselves out, with pockets of activity where fire-fighting and rescue operations were going on and groups of people had formed themselves into rescue teams to try to extricate those buried beneath rubble. A small number of people had been able to obtain medical assistance but thousands were totally unable to get near a hospital because of the large numbers of injured requiring attention. By the end of the day almost all organized endeavour within the areas hit by the nuclear explosion had to be concentrated on attempting to cope with the enormous numbers of casualties. Hospitals were being inundated with requests for help and submerged by the wave of people appearing for treatment. Many were still lying where they had been injured; there was no way of collecting them up. The numbers of people appearing at hospitals were such that physical protection of the premises was required from the police. Even so, the anxiety of people to receive treatment themselves or have others treated was so great that violence began to develop and there were disturbances outside some of the surviving hospitals.
The movement of survivors out of the area, by vehicle or on foot, soon began to clog the remaining passable roads and severely hampered the emergency services. Further police effort was required to control this. The police manpower available for this task, and also for the protection of the hospitals, even with the help of reserve army units, was simply insufficient. Chaos began to develop on the roads, chiefly near hospitals and in areas which had suffered less damage than others and where people came to find food and shelter. As the night wore on the absence of electricity made matters worse, so that the day ended in a shamb
les of uncoordinated activity by fire-fighting and rescue teams doing what they could against the mountain of disaster facing them, in an environment where hundreds of thousands of people were seeking food and shelter and attention for severe injuries. The extent of the disaster and its aftermath was such that the local authorities were quite unable to control events.
During the day the situation in Birmingham had been in the minds of the entire country. Everyone was aware that a nuclear device had been exploded and most were convinced that it was only the first of many. This caused an element of panic everywhere as individuals sought either to protect themselves within their own homes or to move from urban areas out into the country, where they imagined they might be safer. The potential mass exodus of people was of great concern to the government, who strove to check it through broadcast messages. Fortunately no further nuclear attack took place. Nevertheless, local authorities everywhere were making preparations to ensure their own survival and might not have been receptive to requests to provide Birmingham with assistance, had these been made.
