July 10, 2005
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Toby Mason/Polaris
The scene at Tavistock Square, where a double-decker bus that was destroyed by a bomb looked as if it had been peeled open. Thirteen people were killed in the blast on Thursday.
July 9, 2005
Overslept? You Lived. Caught the Bus? You Died.
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, July 8 – Paul Dadge overslept. That meant he reached the subway late, boarded a train at King’s Cross late, and ended up two trains behind -instead of possibly inside – the one ripped apart by a bomb deep in the tunnel outside the Edgware Road station at 9:17 a.m.
Above ground, half an hour later, Stuart Nield was riding his motorcycle near Tavistock Square a little way behind a No. 30 bus, poised to speed up and overtake it. Suddenly, a fire engine backed out onto the street, forcing him to stop and wait while the bus moved ahead. A moment later, the bus blew up.
On any other day, they might have been the trivial details of an early-morning trip to work. Should you hit the snooze button and buy a few extra moments of sleep? Should you brazen your way onto a packed subway car, or wait for the next one? But on Thursday morning, they made all the difference.
“It’s quite shocking to think about, that you could have been within 10 seconds of being another statistic,” Mr. Nield, 36, a trademark lawyer, said in an interview. “One minute you’re on the way to work, and the next second people are being blown out of the windows of a bus by somebody’s bomb.”
London took stock of itself on Friday, counting its dead, surveying its damage, trying its best to restore itself to normal after a day that was anything but. All the main train stations were open, bringing commuters in and out of London. Buses were running. And even more surprisingly, service was restored on much of the subway system, although there were some obvious gaps on the lines where the bombs went off. It was not clear when the damage to those would be repaired, or even when all the bodies still lying underground would be removed and identified.
But as they made their way to and from work on Friday, many people in London betrayed a fatalistic streak formed and hardened by years of experience with terrorist attacks. As 59-year-old Colin Hindmarch said, “It could happen to anyone.”
Mr. Hindmarch, a biologist, said in an interview that he was at King’s Cross station on Thursday morning, having just traveled down from Newcastle, when the order came to evacuate. At that point, emergency service workers were still referring to what had happened as an “incident,” and it would be some time before he and his fellow commuters realized that a bomb had gone off on a train 70 feet below them at 8:56 a.m., killing at least 21 people and hurting scores.
“Well, think yourself lucky,” an emergency service worker told him, before sending him on the long trek on foot to Kensington for a meeting that was later canceled. “You’re out, and you’re safe.”
Mr. Hindmarch said he was “utterly impressed” with the way the emergency services, who have long braced themselves for such an attack, took charge of the situation. “They knew what to do,” he said. “There was no alarm, no panic.”
The No. 30 bus that exploded not far from Mr. Nield on Thursday had been diverted slightly off its normal path to escape the stream of passengers evacuating King’s Cross station, George Psaradakis, the driver, said in a statement on Friday.
“Suddenly, there was a bang, then carnage,” said Mr. Psaradakis, 49, who suffered just minor injuries. “Everything seemed to happen behind me. I tried to help the poor people.” Thirteen passengers were killed in the blast.
A day later, the red double-decker buses on the same route filled up rapidly during the evening rush, with passengers as varied as the neighborhoods though which they run.
Women in head scarves were seated near Nigerian men in baseball caps and jean jackets. Portly British men shared benches with Asian teenagers wearing gold chains.
Most readily admitted to having some jitters, but said they were determined to carry on the way they always did. Many were reading copies of newspapers carrying full-page photographs of the destroyed bus, which was surrounded by rubble and looked as if it had been peeled open.
For Harvey Deaton, a manager for British Telecom who comes from Leeds and works in London three days a week, luck came in the form of a decision to arrive in the city on Wednesday, not Thursday, and a further decision not to take the subway Thursday morning. His usual route takes him along the Piccadilly Line, between King’s Cross and Russell Square, the site of the most serious attack. “You just think, ‘There for the more grace of God…’ ” he said.
Mr. Deaton said he was undaunted by the terrorist attacks and – like many others interviewed as they waited for trains at King’s Cross on Thursday – said he was not afraid to take either the train or the subway. “Obviously, things have happened before,” he said, mentioning, for instance, a fire at King’s Cross station in 1987 that killed 31 people. “If your number’s up, your number’s up.”
Robin Bulow, 44, reading a magazine as he traveled westbound on a District Line train on Friday afternoon, said he, too, would continue riding the subway, even though many of his friends had been caught up in the attack. “It could happen to anyone, on any bus or train,” he said.
Mr. Dadge, the man who overslept only to miss the early train that might have killed him, found himself something of a celebrity on Friday. A photograph of him helping a burn victim from the Edgware Road explosion whose face was covered with a white dressing was published in many newspapers, including this one. He said he hoped his decision to continue taking public transportation would send a message of sorts to the terrorists that Londoners would not be cowed. “We always knew there was going to be an explosion in London,” said Mr. Dadge, 28, who works for America Online. “It’s a question of when, not if. It’s pure coincidence that I was there then.”
Inside King’s Cross, Kevin Bye, a 52-year-old train driver, said he rode past King’s Cross early on Thursday, missing the explosion by about 15 minutes. That is why he was standing in the station on Friday afternoon, ready to head home to his family in Peterborough, and not lying in a hospital somewhere.
“Whether you were 10 minutes away or 10 hours away,” he said, “you still missed it.”
Heather Timmons, Jonathan Allen and Karla Adam contributed reporting for this article.
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