2005 London Bombings
I was on a
one week business trip in early July, enjoying my third visit to London.
Previously I had stayed in a small city on the outskirts of London, Woking. This trip we were visiting offices in central London, so
the hotel we were staying at,
The Montague on the Gardens Hotel, right across the street from the
British Museum, was also relatively near our London offices.
It also happens the hotel is
no more than 20 paces from Russell Square, very near were two of the
explosions occurred - one in the tube line between Russell Square to
Kings Cross, and the bus explosion at Tavistock Square, a short walk to
the North West of Russell square.
We could have used the tube
at Russell Square to get 2/3rd of the way to the office, but it involved
backtracking so we walked ever morning. That particular morning of
July 7th would have had us within a couple blocks of the office building
when the bombs began going off, but at that point we were fairly far
from any tube stop and didn't notice anything.
As we settled into our
meeting, a British co-worker came into the conference room and said that
there had been a report of an explosion going off in the tube. My
immediate thought was fairly blasé, I imagined a power problem
misreported or something similar.
Fairly quickly though, he
and others began getting additional reports of other explosions.
It quickly escalated via rumor mill to many more than had actually
occurred, but one true fact was a report that all the tube lines had
been shut down and evacuated. At the same time, the office
building was locked down and no one was allowed to leave or enter.
At this point I realized
this was going to be an "International News Event" and it was very early
in the morning in Colorado, but I knew that one of the first things my
wife did was turn on the news when she got up. What I did NOT need
was for any panic to ensue at home, so I began to immediately trying to
call home. As one could expect, I either got no dial tone at all
or a "All Circuits are Busy" for quite some time. I eventually got
through and let her know I was ok.
In the building, everyone
was too worked up to work, so the primary activity was watching the
news, checking the internet for updates and lots of call phone calls
checking on friends and relatives.
Mid-day the company decided
to close the building, since the word was out that the tubes and buses
would not re-open and for many, many people, it was a very long way to
home. Cab's were at a premium (and really not to be found at all).
We left the building, and I had an eerie sense of similarity to NYC in
September of 2001, with masses of people walking down the middle of the
street, all very quite, many attempting to use cells phones but
otherwise no noise.
In that part of central
London, all the streets had been closed, so vehicle traffic was not a
problem anyway. One problem that presented itself for many people was
food... all of the restaurants and pubs had closed, allowing their
workers to go home, and for the masses of people there was no place to
eat.
Having no
place else to go, I went back to the hotel room and watch the news...
I felt very strange there, watching TV while the events continued around
me. I couldn't stand it anymore and decided to go out and at least
walk around.
I walked over to Russell
Square, which was blocked off with police tape. I had my camera
with me, and had plenty of photo op's but somehow taking pictures didn't
feel right. A classic moment came when I spotted two young British
women sitting on a staircase, hugging and holding each other, crying.
It looked like a classical newsworthy image, but I couldn't bring myself
to raising the camera, it felt like a horrible invasion of privacy.
A photo journalist I'll never be.
The only remaining
difficulties for me was actually getting to the airport the next day,
the Tube was obviously shut down and the part of London I was in was
also shut to motor traffic. Fortunately some roads opened sometime
in the night, and a cab was able to take me. I missed the fate of
many travelers I saw the previous day - walking with luggage out of
central London, hoping to eventually find a cab.
Awaiting me
and fellow travelers upon our arrival in Chicago was a gauntlet of media
folks, looking for eyewitness's to anything pertinent or mundane, but I
managed to avoid my five seconds of fame and proceeded to make my way to
my connect flight... |