The grim task of sifting through the wreckage of the airshow plane crash in Shoreham that killed seven people is continuing.
Arc lights stood over the site of the remains of the Hawker Hunter that had been attempting a loop manoeuvre at the airshow in West Sussex.
Police cars and Highways Agency trucks lined the A27, a normally busy road linking Brighton to Worthing that will be shut until Monday.
Barely 100 metres from the crash scene, thousands of airshow spectators filed out of Shoreham airport in their cars, one by one.
For hours into the night, the cars filtered through a small gate on the edge of the airfield, some pulling trailers containing exhibition stands or light aircraft. The show was to run for two days but organisers have cancelled Sunday’s events.
The site of the crash is about 200 metres from a small caravan park where about 40 people live in mobile homes.
One of the residents, Philip Barley, was at home when the Hawker Hunter attempted the loop manoeuvre. Barley, a landscape gardener, said: “I saw it come over and I could hear it got in trouble. It made a big thrust noise as if he was trying get out of trouble.”
He ran from the caravan site to the A27 dual carriageway. “There was a big bowl of flames around the plane and there was a car that was still alight,” he said.
“I couldn’t get closer than 100 yards because of the heat. There were bits of metal everywhere. You couldn’t really make out what was what – what was car or what was plane or something else. It was like a bomb had gone off.”
Barley and his neighbours tried to help some of the people caught up in the mayhem.
“There was a lady who was walking along when it happened and she just collapsed. One bloke had lost his senses. He was just blubbering about calling his sister but he couldn’t figure out how to use his phone.
“I spoke to a guy in a Ford Mondeo who was driving along and he was past a few seconds before it happened. He said he had just dropped off his wife at the show. He saw a big blast of black smoke with flames coming out of it coming up behind him. It was like a huge fireball – it blew his windows out.”
Barley said there had been several other incidents at airshows at Shoreham in the past, but none as close to his home.
“If it had just been 200 yards different, the whole site would have gone up – women, kids, everyone,” he said. “There’s gas pipes that run along under the road to Lancing. You can just imagine it. But we were lucky. Those poor people. They wouldn’t have had time to react.”
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