Rescuers worked through the night and into Saturday morning to rescue those trapped inside the Clutha pub in central Glasgow.
LONDON — One person was killed and others were feared dead after a police helicopter that apparently lost power crashed through the roof of a crowded pub in Glasgow, injuring at least 30 people, police officials said Saturday.
Emergency services were still searching for survivors at the wrecked building, where a ska band was performing about 10:30 p.m. Friday night when the helicopter, carrying two police officers and a civilian spun down onto the pub, the Clutha.
“I can also confirm one fatality,” said Stephen House, the chief constable of the police in Scotland. “We expect that number to increase over the coming hours.” The injured were taken to three hospitals across the city, he said.
Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, said it was a “black day for Glasgow and Scotland,” and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain described the accident as a “tragic event.”
The crash took place on the eve of Scotland’s national day, St Andrew’s Day, and left the country in shock. But there was widespread praise for the reaction of Glaswegians who rushed to help get the injured clear. Mr. Salmond said Scots could take “pride and courage in how we respond to adversity and tragedy.”
Fraser Gibson, who was at pub at the time of the crash, estimated that there were about 120 people inside. “It sounded like a giant explosion,” he told the BBC. “Part of the room was covered in dust. We didn’t know what had happened. We froze for a second, there was panic and then people trying to get out the door.”
At first patrons did not understand the seriousness of the situation, said Grace MacLean, who was also inside.
“There was like a whoosh noise,” she said. “Then there was some smoke, what seemed like smoke, so the band were laughing and we were all joking that the band had made the roof come down, and at the time they carried on playing. Then it started to come down more and someone started screaming, and then the whole pub just filled with dust, like you couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t breathe.”
A Labour member of Parliament, Jim Murphy, was driving nearby and saw “a pile of people clambering out of a pub, the dust, no smoke, no fire, but huge dust and people covered in dust and multiple injuries,” he said. Glaswegians formed a human chain to help pull others out of the pub, he said.
“The helicopter was inside the pub,” Mr. Murphy told Sky News. “It’s a mess. I could only get a yard or two inside.”
“No one knew what it was but you saw the pandemonium of people trying to get out of the pub. It was a horrific scene,” said Mr. Murphy, whose shirt had blood stains from one of the injured as he spoke a BBC reporter. “It was not something I have ever seen and it is not something I ever want to see again.”
The editor of The Scottish Sun, Gordon Smart, was in a parking lot nearby and heard a misfiring engine, he said. The helicopter was about 500 yards above him.
“It was falling at great speed,” he said. “It looked like the rotors weren’t spinning. The helicopter was sort of turning in a strange position and dropped at great speed. But oddly enough there was no explosion, no fireball.”
The three people in the helicopter survived the crash.
Glasgow’s deputy chief constable, Rose Fitzpatrick, said in a statement that “we are working hard to recover people still inside the building and we will make further details available when we have them.” She said it was too early to know why the dark blue police helicopter — a Eurocopter EC135 T2, with twin engines — had crashed.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said that teams of some 125 firefighters were working to stabilize the building and safely remove those remaining inside, using sniffer dogs. The left side of the building looked to have collapsed and a department spokesman, Lewis Ramsay, said the building was “very unsafe.”
The Accident Investigation Branch said it had sent a team to investigate the accident.
Images of the aftermath of the crash showed wreckage from the tail of the helicopter littering the roof of the pub, one piece sticking out of a hole gashed in the building’s ceiling.
John McGarrigle waited by the police cordon outside the pub, anxious for news about his father. “I think he was in there when it crashed,” he said. “I’ve checked every hospital and there’s no sign of him. I’m very anxious. I’m just going to stand here till I see casualties come out of the building.”
In a statement Mr. Cameron praised the emergency services and said he wanted to “pay tribute to the bravery of the ordinary Glaswegians who rushed to help.”
“We have offered the Scottish Government our support in any way we can and we are all wishing a speedy recovery to those who are injured,” he added.
Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, called the accident an “unimaginable horror.”
