(no subject)
a friend of my dad knows this woman who wrote this article, and although she wasnt physically hurt, i'm sure it did her some damage mentally, how could it not?
well i just thought you all should read this.
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It was the silence that was scary. First there was a terrifying bang and the people around me were jolted off their feet. I was sitting beside a partition so I must have banged my shoulder, but in the initial shock I didn’t feel a thing.
For a few moments there was nothing, no movement, no sound. A woman across the carriage caught my eye. We stared at each other, bewildered, not understanding what had happened.
Then the silence was broken by a man screaming. It was the most horrific sound I have heard in my life and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. A man was clearly trapped under the Circle line train and his wailing echoed the length of the tunnel. “Help me. Please, somebody help me. Help! Help!” The agony and desperation in his voice was sickening.
Just then, smoke began to drift into the carriage and people started panicking. Until this point I had comforted myself with the idea that we had just taken a bend too fast and hit the side of the tunnel. It seems ridiculous now.
Two men standing next to me tried to force open the doors to get some air into the carriage, which was now full of dust. One wedged his bag between the doors.
The man’s screams continued, the noise becoming more harrowing and desperate by the minute. By this time I’d walked backwards to the very last carriage. A man went to the driver’s door and began to hammer it down. Some people screamed at him to stop, others were becoming hysterical.
An Underground worker in a bright orange jacket ran past, shouting for us to stay calm. I found myself hoping someone would sort out the man on the track because I didn’t think I could bear his screams much longer.
Then suddenly the rear door opened and I was surprised how high off the ground we were. There was a good 5ft drop onto the rails. Someone shouted that the electricity hadn’t been turned off. More panic. Then London Underground men started to help us down one by one onto the tracks, warning us to walk on the gravel and not to trip over the cables.
As we had been sitting near the back, we were the first to get off. I looked back down the side of the train into the darkness. I could make out two or three bodies lying on the track but there was no movement and the screaming had stopped. The silence was even worse than the screaming: I realised people had probably died.
Upstairs the ticket hall was oddly quiet. Outside, a crowd was gathering and worried, curious faces stared at us as we emerged.
I turned around and was shocked to see bloodied, burnt people coming out of nowhere behind me. The first was a girl in her early twenties. The skin was peeling off the entire right-hand side of her face, her tights had been burnt off her bloodied legs and hung like cobwebs around her ankles. She had a gash on her forehead.
She told me her name was Davinia and asked me to telephone her boyfriend. She would become the woman in the mask on the front of the next day’s papers. She handed me her mobile. It was charred and wet with blood.
She was confused and thought she had already spoken to him but when I got through - just before the mobile network collapsed - I found myself breaking the news that she had been in the bombing and was injured but still alive.
She began to cry. Her face was burning and she was desperate for someone to help relieve her pain. I cursed my ignorance of first aid. She wanted me to pour cold water on her, but was that the right thing to do? There was no sign of an ambulance.
We had moved back into the station by now and a woman near me suddenly fainted. A man opposite me sat in devastated silence. I couldn’t make out his eyes through the blood on his face. There were four more men in the same state of shock.
I sat down with Davinia, who was hysterically flapping her hands around her face to cool it down. Strangely, we started chatting and found out we were from the same part of Essex. We also live in the same part of London. She had been on her way to work and was looking forward to picking up a new car. A Ford Focus.
I became aware of a charred, burning smell and looked around me before I realised it was coming from her. There was nothing left of her eyelashes but charred stubs, and her hair had been badly singed. She told me how she remembered the fireball coming towards her in the carriage.
She was begging for some of the water that staff from London Underground were pouring into cups. I grabbed one and made to hand it to her but, trembling, she asked me to pour it over her head and legs instead. She was being so brave.
Shaking, she asked me why the ambulance hadn’t come. It had been more than 20 minutes since the accident and there was still no sign of help.
Eventually, we heard the sirens in the distance. At first the paramedics seemed to mill around at the entrance, surveying the scene. Frustrated, I asked: “Why the hell has it taken you so long?” They ignored me.
They asked my companion: “Do you know what day it is?” in order to categorise the seriousness of her injuries. They then issued coloured wrist tags with Priority 1, 2 and 3 on them. I think she was Priority 2. Looking at her, I wondered what on earth Priority 1 might look like.
They dressed her face but liquid from the medicated cloth ran into her eyes and she kept asking me to wipe them for her. When I looked down at my hands, I realised for the first time that they were dirty and speckled with blood.
My boyfriend rang and I began to realise that we were part of something bigger.
We were moved into Marks & Spencers but 45 minutes later were told by the police to move away from the windows and panic spread again. A policeman discovered a black bag and asked us whether we knew who it belonged to. When nobody responded, I grabbed my companion’s bag and fled with other survivors to the Hilton Metropole hotel.
The Tube may have reopened and though I want to get back on a train, I just can’t trust myself yet. I don’t know how long that will last. I just can’t get that terrified man’s screaming out of my head.
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