The blast came at 11:00 UTC. Approximately a hundred people were at work inside. The first crew to arrive was a Patient Transport Ambulance team who happened to be nearby and made the decision to divert straight to the scene rather than wait for dispatch. Working before reinforcements arrived, they took control of the evacuation and pulled survivors clear of the rubble. Their early intervention saved dozens of lives. Around a dozen workers were trapped beneath the collapsed floors. Some shouted to make themselves heard. Some used their mobile phones. Up to 300 firefighters and paramedics eventually converged on the site, supported by a Sea King rescue helicopter from RAF Leconfield and a sniffer-dog team from RAF Waddington. Eleven volunteers from the International Rescue Corps - a group used to flying to earthquake zones - travelled to Maryhill.

Fire crews worked with sniffer dogs, carbon-dioxide detectors that pick up the breath of trapped people, thermal-imaging cameras, and fibre-optic probes. They pulled seven survivors from the rubble on the first day. The injured went to five Glasgow hospitals - Stobhill, the Western Infirmary, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Southern General, and the Victoria Infirmary. Seven were declared dead at the scene. Two more died at the Western Infirmary. The search continued for three more days. When Timothy Smith's body was recovered from the site on 14 May, Strathclyde Fire Brigade announced what everyone present already knew: no one else would come out alive.

Early theories were wrong. Some witnesses had seen industrial gas ovens in the coating department explode, but those ovens were later recovered intact. The Health and Safety Executive briefly considered whether there had been any explosion at all, or whether heavy machinery on the upper floors had simply collapsed through the building. The final HSE report ended the speculation. A liquefied petroleum gas tank and its associated pipes, installed beneath the factory in the late 1960s, had been corroding for decades. Gas had been leaking. On 11 May 2004 it found an ignition source. The pipes were buried. No one inspected them. No one knew.

The Crown Office decided on 17 February 2006 to prosecute ICL Plastics Limited and ICL Tech Limited under the Health and Safety at Work Act, charging both companies with failing to maintain pipes carrying hazardous gas, failing to ensure the safety of staff and visitors, and failing to carry out adequate risk assessments. The trial began on 13 August 2007. After the criminal case ended, the public inquiry the families had pressed for finally began. In December 2007, Lord Gill - Lord Justice Clerk - was named to chair it. The inquiry opened in Maryhill Community Central Hall on 2 July 2008, the same building where the first anniversary memorial had been held three years earlier. The Crown, the bereaved families, the HSE, and ICL were all represented. Over 20,000 pages of evidence were examined.

In July 2009, Lord Gill published his report. The inquiry had cost 1.9 million pounds and had taken 13 months from his appointment - which was, by the standards of Scottish public inquiries, fast. The Times would later describe it as 'short, sharp and hard-hitting,' praise that the families' campaigns had earned through years of public pressure. The report criticised both ICL companies and identified failings in how the Health and Safety Executive had supervised and inspected the site. It recommended sweeping changes to how liquefied petroleum gas was stored and used in the UK. A memorial garden, unveiled in May 2007, holds the names of the nine. A boost for the Grovepark Fund came when Henrik Larsson, then leaving Celtic FC, auctioned the shirt from his farewell match against Sevilla - it sold for 1,400 pounds. Small things, against the scale of what was lost. But the families had pushed until someone in authority had to look properly at what happened on Grovepark Street, and write it down.