London Subway Bombings, July 7, 2005, by Liam Vaughan

From MemoryArchive

Who: Liam Vaughan
What: London Subway Bombings
When: July 7, 2005
Where: London, England

Really insane and surreal day. My office is literally round the corner from where some of the blasts took place and I have spent the morning trying to make sure my friends are OK. I think they are, but the mobile phone networks are down so I haven't been able to confirm. There is no major panic here, just an underlying sense of confusion and despondency. Nobody is communicating and certainly nobody is able to concentrate on work. I guess it's a delayed sense of shock.

Perhaps most disconcerting is that the police have instructed everyone to remain in their building and not try to leave the City. Apparently, police are not allowing people to enter either. In the eye of the storm, I guess. All public transport has been stopped so everyone will be walking home - from my window I can see people walking purposefully, but the streets are generally quite desolate, presumably because people either aren't in the City or they are not leaving the office.

I guess people will be talking about this for years to come and yet it all seems strangely ethereal and distant. What strikes me is that places like Israel live like this on a day-to-day basis. It's all so random that maybe 20 out of all the thousands, possibly millions of commuters in the capital today were killed.

There is also the underlying fear that this is not it - that later today or tomorrow or in weeks to come it will happen again. There is always that nagging fear as a Londoner and particularly as one that works in the financial centre of the capital, that you are in a dangerous place and that you are gambling with your life every time you get on at Bank, or Liverpool Street or any of the major tube stations. I always get the bus, but buses have been blown up as well, stripping any reassurance that it is somehow safer.

Just received confirmation from a couple of friends. Just one to get in touch now who works near Aldgate. I'm sure he is fine. Statistically the chances of him being one of the few are small. And so we wait.

Co-opted from Guardian Unlimited