My Dad worked for the BBC at the time, in the Information Department. He was one of the first people to find out about it, as he left work from the late shift. As he left work, they thought she just had a broken arm, but as he left, he found out she had died. The next day, he went in on his day off, because the phones were off the hook. I found out about her death, having gotten up, and asked why he'd gone into work. I was only 7, but you get to understand shift work, so i knew that he should have been there in the morning, because he had just done a late shift. People were phoning to congratulate the BBC on their handing of it, to ask if it was real or a hoax, and sometimes to complain that it had too much coverage. Everyone in his department pulled together, coming in on their days off, to make sure that the public had their say. After all, that was their jobs.
The BBC has an internal newspaper called the Ariel. This is part of what he said about that night, taken from an interview..
....On an average Sunday, we take between 300 and 600 calls. That day we answered 2,300. During that week the level of calls remained high- around 2000 a day