The Mull of Kintyre Disaster: The Villagers: Tragedy leaves remote community shocked

EVEN though the Chinook disaster claimed no souls of their own, the residents of the tiny village of Southend on the southern tip of the Mull of Kintyre were yesterday stunned by the loss of life near by, writes Ian MacKinnon.

Many from the surrounding area and as far away Campbeltown, 18 miles distant, were among the first rescuers on the scene and had to contend with the grim sight of multilated corpses strewn among the gorse.

All day the build up of emergency services, investigating teams and the media grew as Strathclyde police kept a large area of the charred hillside cordoned off to prevent contamination of the crash site and loss of evidence vital to pinpoint the reason for the disaster.

Police set up their mobile incident headquarters at one end of the village overlooking the sea, while a few hundred yards away broadcasters' satellite dishes mushroomed on the foreshore.

Eventually, all 29 bodies were removed in Ford Transit vans along the single-track road leading from the lighthouse to a temporary mortuary in the nearby RAF base at Machrihanish. Yesterday, the weather veered from bright sun to heavy rain and mist as the investigators began their difficult task on 1,405ft-high Beinn na Lice with its sheer cliff faces.