Clarkston explosion investigator's son shares father's memories ahead of 50th anniversary

Engineers had been called to the site the previous day after customers and staff complained they could smell gas. By the next morning, the terrace of shops was given the all-clear, although the smell is said to have lingered.

The force of the blast, equivalent to a 300lb bomb, blew out the front of 10 shops and a passing bus took the full force. 

A 19-day fatal accident inquiry, the longest that had been held in Scotland, ruled that the tragic event, on October 21 1971, was accidental and no blame was apportioned.

However, Gordon Gibb, whose late father was tasked with piecing through the rubble that night to seek out evidence before it was destroyed during the search for survivors, believes the findings would be different today.

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Dr William Gibb tutored in chemistry at Cambridge and Strathclyde universities before becoming a full time forensic fire investigator and expert witness. It was his expertise in hydrocarbons which meant he was regularly called out to fires and explosions in Glasgow, which had been dubbed ‘Tinderbox City.’

“It was around 8.30pm when the phone rang and we were all sitting at the dinner table”, recalled Mr Gibb, who was 12 at the time and living in Newlands, around two miles from the scene of the tragedy.

“The caller asked my father to confirm that he could attend the locus of an explosion. I remember him gathering up his camera and his equipment. Then police officers arrived to take him to the site.”

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Victims of the explosion, which destroyed several shops and a terraced car park, included shoppers and retail staff and the passengers of a bus that had been passing the scene.

“He told us it was an awful task, “ said Mr Gibb. “He saw the outcome uncovered, in the rain and the rubble, late into the night. 

“At one point he thought he had made his own gruesome discovery, only to be reassured by a fireman that it was part of a buried dress mannequin. 

“He laughed, but we could see he was shaken.”

Mr Gibb said his father’s investigations unearthed a fractured gas pipe under the pavement in front of the shops.

“There was a void under the shops which filled with gas. It was part of a basement. At one end was a boiler with a time clock. 

“The boiler came on, ignited the gas and created a pressure wave of flame that doubled in speed with every basement column it spun round as it passed. 

“The flame hit the end wall of the basement at a speed greater than the speed of sound and its explosive force could only go upwards, out of the front of the building and through the pavement, demolishing the shops and crushing a bus at the bus stop.”

The inquiry concluded that the leak was caused by an accidental gas main fracture caused by “stress and corrosion.”

“My father produced his report and he told the truth as he always did” said Mr Gibb.

“The inquiry decided that the gas board were not to blame, even though the gas smell had been investigated by them in the preceding days and nothing had been done to address what was clearly a serious notification of impending danger. 

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“Nevertheless, my father’s evidence made him rather unpopular with the board who, for the first time, in 1972, actually stopped sending him their customary Christmas bottle of whisky.” Mr Gibb’s father, who passed way in 2011, had formerly been Chairman of the Institute of Fuel.

The Glasgow based architect followed in his father’s footsteps and within a week of graduating he was in the Court of Session giving evidence as an expert witness after the burning down of a school in the Hyndland area of Glasgow.

He contributed to the parliamentary inquiry into the twin fires at Glasgow School of Art, a role complicated by the fact he was a tutor.  In January, he was sacked for ‘breach of contract’ after stating that more lessons should have been learned from the first fire.

“I know from my own work that if the Clarkston inquiry were held today, the outcome would probably be different." he said: "In the early 1970s the law was perhaps more favourable to the larger institutions than the individual. 

“I remember my father having a rather sanguine view that they kind of got away with it.

“No one other than the shops who were insured, got a single penny in compensation. The individual claims trundled on and on and I think they may have got some pitiful payments in the end.”

His father was also involved in the investigation into an gas explosion at a house in Larkhall which killed a family of four in December 1999 and resulted in Transco being fined £15million.

“The gas main was riddled with holes. If you compare that with Clarkston you would probably say that if the law and consideration of liability had been developed then they would have been held to account.”