London Subway Bombings, July 7, 2005 by Vidar Hokstad

From MemoryArchive

Who: Vidar Hokstad
What: London Subway bombings
When: July 7th, 2005
Where: London, UK

I was on the train to Victoria when my fiancee called to tell me the underground had been shut down... Right afterwards people started talking about explosions.

We hadn't yet arrived at Clapham Junction, so I more or less expected the train to be stopped there, assuming they'd at least do a full security sweep of the major train stations, but we continued on to Victoria.

When we got there the only thing we were told was that the underground and bus services had been suspended, and the security announcements that normally would be going every few minutes seemed to be on a more or less continuous loop.

What surprised me the most was the total lack of police presence on the main concourse at Victoria. I went in there to see the news screen, but it looked like (I can't be sure) they froze the news until it was past the first segment - there was nothing about the blasts. This was at around 10am, so they should have had reports by then.

I was on my way to the Norwegian embassy to get my new passport, so I made my way out and walked to Belgrave Square. Afterwards I walked to Hyde Park Corner to see if the underground had reopened. In the end I walked all the way to the office (45 minutes or so) in Shaftesbury avenue.

The atmosphere was eerie - lots of people seemed (and probably were) completely oblivious, and many complaining about the buses or chatting to underground staff at the stations, most of whom did't seem to know any more about what was going on.

But many had clearly heard something had happened, or had gotten worried by the constant stream of police and ambulances - all of the ones I saw were heading East in the directions of most of the blasts, which made it even stranger, as that was the direction I was heading in as well...

By the time I got to Charing Cross Road, police and army personell had blocked large sections of it going towards Tottenham Court Road, keeping people away from two evacuated buses (but no signs of damage - looked like just a precaution as we're not far from several of the blast sites).

Cellphones are more or less useless still, as emergency calls have been given priority and the network is overloaded.

Later in the day

Left work early today, as we heard East Croydon station had been closed too due to a controlled explosion of a suspicious package. I walked down to Embankment Pier and met my fiancee there, as we didn't want to get on the overcrowded trains.

It's been grey most of today, but the sun did finally come out, and the crowd was fairly cheerful despite todays event and the amazingly long queue. Despite the queue we didn't have to wait more than a few minutes before we got onto a boat, and got to relax in relative comfort on our way to Tower Pier... It's actually the first time I've been on a boat on the Thames during daytime, despite having lived here for more than five years, so I was preoccupied with the views for most of the ride.

Then we had a nice walk along the river and over London Bridge. Amazingly we got on a train within minutes.

(Adapted from my entries written on the day: London bomb blasts ...and then the sun came out