The emergency planners charged with protecting London from a terrorist attack may have drawn the wrong lessons from 9/11 and failed, as a result, to pay enough attention to the likely needs of survivors, according to an official report published today.
The London Assembly report on the response to the July 7 suicide bomb attacks finds that the city's emergency services were ill prepared for a major terrorist incident, prone to communication failures and lacking sufficient medical supplies.
The Assembly's July 7 Review Committee pay tribute to individual acts of bravery and courage in the minutes and hours after the bomb attacks.
But it says that the "most striking failure" of the emergency response was a lack of planning for the care of victims, who were allowed to wander off from the scene of the bombings and then left to cope by themselves with their trauma.
"There is an overarching, fundamental lesson to be learnt from the response to the 7 July attacks, which underpins most of our findings and recommendations," the report says.
"The response on 7 July demonstrated that there is a lack of consideration of the individuals caught up in major or catastrophic incidents. Procedures tend to focus too much on incidents, rather than on individuals, and on processes rather than people.
The report adds: "In New York on 11 September 2001, many people died and few survived. The situation on 7 July was the opposite: a relatively small proportion of victims lost their lives, but there were hundreds of survivors. Because emergency plans following 9/11 are based very much on the lessons learnt from that specific incident, they tend not to consider the needs of survivors."
The 7/7 attacks claimed the lives 52 commuters on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus, as well as the four young Muslim men who carried out the bombings. Some 700 people were treated for injuries and thousands more suffered lasting psychological trauma.
The findings of the committee contrast markedly with the conventional view expressed by Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, and others in the days after the attacks that police, ambulance and fire services had sprung smoothly into action after Britain's worst terrorist attacks.
Instead, the report describes how communications within and between the various emergency services all too often failed in the hours after the attack.
The committee said that it was "unacceptable" that the emergency services were still unable to communicate by radio when underground. There was also an over-reliance on the mobile phone network, it said.
But the most striking failure identified by the committee was the lack of planning to care for people who survived or were traumatised by the bombings. Part of the blame for that failure
The report revealed that as many as 6,000 people were likely to have been severely psychologically affected by the explosions but that the majority were still not known to the authorities or part of any support network. This was "completely unacceptable", the report said.
Richard Barnes, who chaired the committee, said today: "There is no doubt that lives were saved by individual acts of incredible bravery and courage by members of the emergency services, other passengers and members of the public.
"London’s emergency plans have been tested, practised and refined, but on July 7 it was clear that they ignored the needs of many individuals caught up in the attacks. They focused on incidents but not individuals, and processes rather than people. It is vital that these plans are reviewed and updated to address this major issue.
"In November we will be asking the authorities for progress work on the recommendations we have made and want to see some significant changes. If not, we will certainly be asking why."
The report revealed that radios used by most blue-light emergency services still did not work underground, despite recommendations made 18 years ago in the wake of the King’s Cross Tube fire.
The report concluded: "The plans, systems and processes intended to provide a framework for the response to major incidents in London must be revised and improved. Communications within and between the emergency services did not stand up on July 7."
The report added: "It’s unacceptable that the emergency services, with the exception of the British Transport Police, are still not able to communicate by radio when they are underground."
The committee said there was "no excuse" for failing to rectify this by the end of next year.
As a result of the communication breakdown, some emergency services personnel at the blast site could not communicate with each other or in some cases even with their control rooms.
The report estimated that at least 1,000 adults and 2,000 of their children were likely to have suffered from post-traumatic stress as a result of the bombing. A further 3,000 others had been directly affected, it said.
"The majority of them are still not known to the authorities, are not part of any support network of survivors and have been left to fend for themselves," the committee concluded.
There had been no systematic establishment of survivor reception areas, so many had simply left the scenes without having given their personal details to anyone.
The report added: "The failure to plan for the care of hundreds of people who are likely to have suffered psychological trauma having survived the July 7 explosions is completely unacceptable."
Phil Woolas, the Local Government Minister who heads up the London Resilience Partnership, said that lessons would be learnt from the Assembly’s recommendations.
The London Resilience Partnership was set up after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and represents London’s key emergency services, overseeing strategic emergency planning in the capital and designing practice emergency plans.
Mr Woolas said: "The sheer scale and unique nature of events on 7 July mean that naturally there will be lessons to learn about our response. Some issues have already been recognised and acted upon, such as communications systems and problems with radios underground.
"We shall study the report’s recommendations closely and take on board any additional lessons, whilst never forgetting the professionalism and individual acts of heroism that characterised London’s response to the bombings."
Peter Bradley, chief executive of the London Ambulance Service (LAS), said the service had been "honest" about the difficulties it faced on the day of the attacks.
"The events of July 7 were unprecedented and the courageous actions of our staff and their colleagues from other agencies undoubtedly saved lives," he said.
"We have acknowledged we faced difficulties with communications that day, but this did not prevent us treating and transporting more than 400 patients to hospital from all the sites within three hours - this is a testament to the way everyone involved handled what was a tremendously challenging situation.
"We have been honest about the fact that there were a number of lessons to learn, and indeed the committee has previously praised us for the amount of information we have made available."
Mr Bradley said work was going on to improve the LAS’s ability to respond to future major incidents.
In Downing Street, Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "We will study the report in detail. Nothing should take away from the overall impression that people have of how the emergency services worked on that day, both at an individual level and a systemic level.
"They put into operation the plans that had been carefully worked out for such an eventuality. Are there lessons that inevitably people can learn as they go from plans to reality? Of course. Those, in many ways, have already been learned but, in general, nothing should take away from the magnificent response of people on the day."
