BRITISH soap Emmerdale will screen a storyline that echoes the Clutha tragedy.

The show's producers said they had considered the Clutha crash when formulating a storyline about a helicopter crashing through the roof of a pub, but decided their events were sufficiently different.

Ten people were killed when the Police Scotland helicopter fell crashed into the city pub on November 29 2013, killing 10 people and injuring several others.

The ITV soap's helicopter crash happens during Pete Barton and Debbie Dingle's wedding day. It injures several guests and kills off at least one major cast member.

Ian O'Prey, father of Mark O'Prey who died in the Clutha crash, said the scenes reminded him of the tragedy but the torture was something he dealt with daily.

He said: "There are so many things that remind us of the crash and this is just another one of those things.

"I suppose you can't sensor everything, you can't run away from it."

Producer of the ITV soap Kate Oates said: "I think editorially, whenever you're looking at any potential disaster scenario you have to consider it very carefully.

"We were really, really careful to make it clear what the cause of the accident is. It's set up over a scrapyard, over a marital dispute, where a gas canister explodes and it's a chain of events.

"It was something that we considered because obviously our intention is always to entertain people, to give them a good story, to thrill them, to upset them in certain kinds of ways sometimes, but it would never be our intention to mimic something like that.

"So we kept it very deliberately far apart. It's not something we were concerned about because we made the decision very carefully."

The scenes will air from Monday August 3.