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Such was the intensity of the raid that the organized services were soon overwhelmed. Communications badly interrupted by direct hit on the control centre, fire-fighting and rescue units toiled independently. A bomb, leaving a crater 30 feet wide by 20 feet deep, severed the town water main in the early hours of the raid cutting fire-fighting supplies. Immediate rescue and assistance by outside organization were made impossible by craters in roads and collapsed buildings. "Five minutes after the siren ... every ambulance in the depot had been called out ... then they started to come in ... the injured and dead ... all night ... a constant stream of injured and dead"
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"There
were firemen slumped on the road ... buildings on both sides of
them were blazing and crumbling ... they had run a hose all the
way to the canal because the mains had gone ... the hoses were
gashed from being dragged over broken glass and rubble ... water
was pouring all over their legs ... some of them had been injured
... they could hardly move ... I have never seen such dirty or
tired men"
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