It is almost a year since a suicide bomber killed himself and 26 others a few feet away from me as my Tube left King’s Cross station. Three hundred and forty of us were injured on that one train alone.
As the bereaved and the survivors prepare themselves for the anniversary of London’s worst terrorist attack, many of us are asking whether we are really any safer. Could more have been done to prevent suffering and save lives before, during and after July 7? Tomorrow will see the publication of another report on 7/7.
The London assembly’s cross-party 7 July review committee was set up in September 2005 to attempt to examine what can be learnt from the response to last year’s bombings. It is not, warns Richard Barnes, the chairman, “intended to be a substitute for a statutory public inquiry”.
Nonetheless the report is likely to cause considerable discomfort at high levels of government and within the management of the emergency services, as it reveals the extent of the chaos after the carnage. It details the desperate attempts of ordinary people to cope with the atrocities and their aftermath. How survivors cradled the dying, waiting to be rescued, while some of the emergency services waited for clearance to enter the tunnels when London Underground staff and British Transport police were already going into them to rescue commuters.
Revealed for the first time is the astonishing testimony about one of the train drivers who stayed to tend to the injured and dying in the choking darkness, while his co-driver led the terrified walking wounded down the dark tracks to safety. And how poor communication systems let down those who tried to assist and get further help. Also detailed is the number of ambulances that were called but did not come and the terrible lack of first aid and medical equipment, how radios did not work and how determined those at the scene were to cope in the face of confusion and insufficient resources.
Some of us directly affected by the blasts gave testimony in public at the London assembly hearing on March 23, some spoke or wrote to the committee in private. But every survivor I know, and I have befriended many through my blog, has spoken of their determination to do what they can to prevent such a horror happening again.
The report, which will run to more than 140 pages, contains the harrowing testimony of more than a score of survivors. It also contains evidence from the emergency services and mobile phone firms. Although its remit was limited and the production of the report used only two full-time members of London assembly staff, it is the first and the only public interrogation of some of the facts.
A theme that is constant in the testimony of the 12 men and women who spoke out publicly about their ordeal is how the authorities seemed unprepared to deal with the large number of walking wounded and deeply traumatised people caught up in the blast. The care for the severely injured, once medical aid reached them, and the support offered to the bereaved are highly praised, but those who staggered away from the tunnels speak of bureaucratic chaos and self-help in the absence of official information or support.
Susan, a freelance art director in her fifties who survived the King’s Cross blast and was trapped underground for almost an hour, tells of finally surfacing, giving both her London and Cotswolds addresses to a police officer at King’s Cross, then wandering, shocked and blackened, through the police cordon and into the streets, unchallenged and unaided.
A passer-by took her to a cafe and then, she says: “An angel called Patricia took me to her home,cared for me all day, listened, gave me tea and chocolate, walked with me across London, helped me onto a crowded bus near home. Then a taxi took me back to the flat for nothing. I went back to work, straight away, kept going until my contract finished in October, then I fell apart. I went to my GP with tinnitus, told her that I had been in the bomb, and only then was I offered counselling for which I had to pay.”
It was by reading about us in a newspaper that she came across King’s Cross United, the survivor group. “All my help and information has come from them,” says Susan. “I’ve been terribly alone for months. So have many, many other people. I would have liked some medical information about trauma. And how was I allowed to wander away from the Tube after the explosion? I was obviously in shock, covered in black soot. I gave my details to the police but nobody contacted me. All my help has come from strangers, people in the street and my family.” She has not worked since October. She is not alone.
Michael, a 39-year-old broker who was injured in the blast at Liverpool Street station and who spoke out at the committee hearings, is quietly angry: “We were let down by bureaucracy. I never thought we’d have to wait so long to be rescued.” He is supporting calls for an independent public inquiry.
I had a two-hour meeting with John Reid, the home secretary, along with other survivors in which we asked why no independent public inquiry was forthcoming. He talked of the security services at full stretch and the lack of resources. He even asked us how we would feel about his explaining to the next set of families and survivors why resources diverted to a public inquiry had led to deaths and injuries.
I, and many others, do not accept the explanation that an inquiry need be like the Bloody Sunday inquiry, taking years and costing many millions of pounds. We who ask for an independent inquiry do not want to compromise the safety of the realm, nor prejudice investigations or trials. The Americans managed to hold the 9/11 commission report while in the middle of a “war on terror”. A stark contrast to Britain’s approach of nothing for 10 months and then three separate reports that seem partially to contradict each other.
Surely we can do better than this? Surely the public’s questions about its safety should be investigated and answered? I have kept a web diary over the past year. It details the slow process of recovery, the help that has come from other survivors as we struggle to comprehend life after coming so close to death. I was put on the waiting list for trauma counselling and started to receive treatment in December. Other survivors are still waiting. Each journey on the Tube is a struggle with fear and with the unanswered questions that will not go away.
I have started a public inquiry petition that many survivors and members of the public have signed. I do not seek a public inquiry as a form of therapy or closure. I want one because I believe it will help all of us to be safer. “I don’t think the Tubes are any safer today than they were on July 6, 2005,” says Nader Mozzaka whose wife Bahnaz, 47, was killed in the explosion as the train left King’s Cross.
“I lost the person who was closest to me all my life and I want to know if she could have been saved. And I won’t know until these questions are answered by a non-politician, someone independent who will let us know the truth at last.”
www.petitiononline.com/July7th/petition.html
www.rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com/
