Woman dies after cliff collapses in Dorset - The Guardian

A young woman has died after a cliff in Dorset collapsed, sending hundreds of tonnes of earth and rock onto a busy beach.

Horrified onlookers – including the woman's father and boyfriend – tried to get to her before another huge section of cliff gave way, forcing them back.

Gary Rafferty, 36, from Bournemouth, went to help when the first part of the cliff collapsed. "I rushed to help and helped a man aged in his 50s out of the debris. I saw his son who had also been trapped. I said to him, 'Are you all right?' and he said, 'No, my girlfriend's trapped under there.' He was quite hysterical."

Rafferty said they had struggled to reach the woman before the second landslide struck.

"They were very unlucky and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were lots of people trying to help but there was nothing anyone could do because the pile of rocks and soil was just so huge."

Emergency crews were joined by specialist search teams and a police helicopter but their efforts were hampered amid fears of further landslides. On Wednesday night police said emergency workers searching for the woman had recovered a body.

Mick Stead, from Dorset fire and rescue service, said a 20-metre stretch of the south-west coast path had given way.

He estimated that about 400 tonnes of mud and rock had fallen from the top of the cliff and down on to the beach. He said rescue teams were working on the assumption that one person was trapped.

Sniffer dogs had been used to search the pile of mud and rocks and rescue teams used listening devices to try to locate the woman. "We have assessed the risks to the emergency workers and it is a question of trying to balance the rescue operation against the risk to us."

Dorset police were called just before 12.30pm and told that a person had been trapped under the landslide 400 metres from the Freshwater Beach holiday park at Burton Bradstock, near Bridport. Witnesses said there was an initial landslide quickly followed by a second, bigger one.

Len Muggerige, who was fishing at the time of the cliff fall, said people had gone to investigate the first collapse when the second happened. "People don't realise how unsafe the cliffs are … It is the weather. It is basically sandstone all along there and unfortunately it is quite soft. Over the last few months we have had a lot of wet weather and it will have got extremely wet. Now it has started to dry out and just come away."

Fisherman Dave Smith, 42, said: "I was fishing on the beach and all of a sudden I heard a great rumble and there was a huge amount of dust. I saw part of the cliff had slumped into the sea.

"I didn't know anyone was under there at the time but people do tend to sit under the cliff. I expect all the rain we have had followed by the hot spell has caused the cliff to crumble."

The cliff forms part of the Jurassic Coast world heritage site and the landslide came on one of the hottest days of the year, just over a fortnight after severe flooding left much of the area under water.

Two weeks ago, Somerset couple Rosemary Snell, 67, and Michael Rolfe, 72, were killed in a landslide at the Beaminster tunnel nine miles away.

Four days ago, Dorset council posted a statement on its website warning walkers and fossil hunters to "beware of landslides and other hazards" following recent bad weather.

It said the exceptionally wet weather of recent months had led to a "heightened risk of rock falls anywhere and at any time along the coast".

A spokesman added on 20 July: "The advice is to stay well away from the cliffs at all times and to beware of mudflows and quicksand, especially when the tide is coming in, as it is possible to become cut off from the normal exit points to and from the beaches."

Dorset fire and rescue said the extreme weather may have contributed to the landslide and the authorities would now consider closing other beaches along the stretch of coast.