it penetrated the interior, destroying the wiring of the fire alarm system in the process. One survivor (who was a child at the time) remembered her father noticing smoke coming from the ventilation shaft and had started to attempt to evacuate when the whole area erupted in flames. The survivor and her mother were separated from her father and sister and stuck in the venue before being rescued through a window by firemen. Because of the locked fire doors, many people headed to the main entrance, which caused a crush. The fire services were not called for over 20 minutes, and even then the call did not originate from Summerland. Instead the first call came from a passing taxi driver, while another came from the captain of a ship offshore who radioed HM Coastguard and said, "It looks as if the whole of the Isle of Man is on fire". The coastguard immediately called the fire brigade. The first responding fire crews realised additional resources would be required and almost every resource available to the Isle of Man Fire and Rescue Service was mobilised to the incident (93 of its 106 firefighters and all 16 of its engines). Victims The fire killed 50 people, eleven of them under the age of twenty. Around eighty people were seriously injured in the resulting crush and fire and received physical and mental scars. The fire brigade's provisional total of 51 deaths at the scene was subsequently revised down to 48, and two others died in hospital, one in Douglas on 11 August and the other in Scotland on 29 September; the latter is excluded from the Isle of Man coroner's list of 49 deaths. Ian Phillips of Birmingham University suggests these reporting discrepancies explain why some sources have given incorrect death tolls of 49, 51, or 53. The inscription on the 1998 disaster memorial did not give a death toll; its 2013 replacement lists all 50 names. Aftermath The death toll brought about a public inquiry that ran from September 1973 to February 1974. Denis Cowley QC acted for the Douglas Corporation. No specific individuals or groups were blamed and the deaths were attributed to misadventure, although the delay in evacuation and the flammable building materials were condemned. On 17 September 1973, three Liverpool boys – two of them 12 and the other 14 – appeared before Douglas Juvenile Court and admitted wilfully