Re: 39 people found dead in lorry
Originally Posted by
Judd
->
Are these containers refrigerated all of the time or just when a tractor unit is attached? If that's the case, it could be that these poor bastards were crammed into the container before it was refrigerated, taken to Purfleet and hooked up to a tractor unit before being taken to the next destination the driver not realising that the refrigeration had kicked in. When he arrived at that destination, he would have checked on his cargo to see if all was well and then found them all frozen to death and so called the police and paramedics.
Thursday evening the BBC did an interview with a teenager and a man who entered the country illegally via a refrigerated lorry a few years ago (they were allowed asylum). The man said in very broken English that the refrigeration was only turned on when the trailer was at ports being inspected. The cold would prevent the warmth of the human body being shown up on scanners.
But normally, the refrigeration is kept on as such trailers have battery backups to keep it running. When the cab hooks up to the trailer, the batteries on the trailer begin to charge. As experts have already pointed out, if the trailers refrigeration was turned on prior to the trailer entering Belgium and arriving at Zeebrugge, the people inside would have already been dead.