Current mood:	alive!
Current music:	Faith & the Muse - Sredni Vashtar

Yesterday my train exploded...
Okay, for anyone out there who's interested, here's my first-hand account of what happened to me on my way into work yesterday.

I can still smell smoke, I have a slight headache and blisters on the soles of my feet, but 21 people died in the train I was on so this is a whinge-free zone. I had no idea when I decided to walk to the other end of the southbound Picadilly Line platform at Kings Cross that this decision would make the difference between life and death/serious injury.

All I can say is "well done" to the Emergency Services who did a damn fine job, and "well done" to the people of London in general for coping so well with the disruption. On my walk through the city yesterday I saw groups of evacutated office workers with nowhere else to go who'd quite obviously decided: "Let's go sit in the pub 'til it all blows over." How British.

First there were bad delays on the Northern Line, so it was standing room only even from as far out as Woodside Park and everyone was crammed in like sardines. Consequently I was late arriving at Kings Cross, where I usually change for the Picadilly Line.

When I got to the Picadilly Line platform London Underground were announcing delays on that line too, and you could tell. The platform was packed. I decided to make my way to the other end because it’s usually slightly less crowded down there. I just managed to squeeze onto the train in the second to last carriage. From what I’ve read/heard I think the bomb must have gone off in either the first or the third carriage from the front.

The train departed as normal. When I was describing it to thessalian and dodgyhoodoo last night I said we were about 30 seconds out of Kings Cross. The reports I’ve read since say it was 3 minutes, so all I can really say now is that it was “not long”. I was reading an article in the paper about London winning the bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

Suddenly there was an almighty bang, the train stopped, all the lights went out and the carriage was filled with thick, dark grey smoke. There was stunned silence for a brief moment while everyone took in what was going on. Then some people started to scream. A man near me shouted to everyone to calm down, and surprisingly they did. Then someone said, “The smoke’s getting thicker!” Someone else pointed out that the smoke was worse higher up and suggested we all sit down, and despite being crammed in like sardines we managed it. Then a lady towards the back of the carriage screamed, “Oh my God! It’s getting really hot down here!” There was more screaming and the start of something that could have turned into a stampede, except it’s hard to stampede in a crammed, enclosed space.

Once again, calm-down-guy managed to get everyone to do just that. Silence decended on the carriage apart from people choking and coughing, then someone near me quipped, “Well, at least we got the Olympics!”

It was around this time that I genuinely thought we were going to die – either burned to death or choking on the smoke, trapped in a tube carriage that was so crowded it would be illegal if we were cattle. I felt quite pleased with myself for not panicking about it.

At that point, people near me started getting practical. We forced open a door, but even more smoke poured in, so we gave up on that idea for a time. Then people started talking. Does anyone have any idea what happened? Why hasn’t the driver said anything? Someone pointed out that the electricity was obviously out, so he wouldn’t be able to communicate. Nobody said (but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking it) maybe it’s because he’s dead… (Actually, I believe the driver survived uninjured.)

There were banging noises from further up the train. At one point it sounded like there was another train coming up behind us. There wasn’t, but I’ve still no idea what that noise actually was. A bloke on one of the seats panicked: “I’ve got to get out of here! I can’t breathe!” but somone sat on him until he calmed down.

There was speculation about what time the explosion had happened. I looked at my watch. It was five past nine, so I said so and said I thought we’d been stuck here about ten minutes. It turns out that this time my sense of timing was more accurate. Reports say the bomb went off at 08:56.

We tried the door again. The air outside was fresher this time, so we kept it open. Unfortunately it would only open to a maximum of about 6-8 inches no matter how hard we pulled. The people opposite got their door open as far as it would go too. The idea of getting off the train was becoming more realistic: fresh air outside – the situation was improving.

Someone passed tissues around. The black soot was getting everywhere. Messages were being passed up and down the train by shouting from carriage to carriage. We ascertained that the people in the rear carriage couldn’t get out through the back, so that was one potential escape route blocked.

Shortly after that the guy next to me, who had stuck his head out through the crack in the doors said, “There are people out there!” They said they’d smashed a window and climbed out. Someone asked them to smash ours, but we decided against it – we wanted the glass going out, not in coming in. A little bit later one of the windows further up our carriage got smashed (I don’t know whether in or out). Someone near us had a tool bag with him, so we were going to use those to smash our windows when we heard that they were evacuating the train. The message we got was that a “man in a uniform” had forced a door open and people were leaving.

We eventually started filing along the train. We were near a fork in the tunnel, so we walked up through the train past the fork, then back through the tunnel along the other part of the fork towards Kings Cross. Someone up ahead held his mobile phone up to take a picture. I think that may well be the one that’s been all over the news. At this point I wished I’d brought my camera. I’ve never walked along the inside of a tube train tunnel before (and probably never will again). We were helped up onto the platform by underground staff and informed there would be water and medical assistance waiting upstairs. By the time I got there all the water was gone.

We drifed up into Kings Cross main line station. I wasn’t sure where to go, and was wondering what to tell work. Some confused-looking commuters stopped me and asked what happened, then a police officer told me to go into the ticket office. It was full of people covered in soot. Some had been bandaged, but most, like me, just seemed a bit dazed. Some were crying. Rail staff and Community Support Officers were giving out bottles of water and tissues.

I called work, told them my train had exploded and said I was covered in all this black, icky stuff, so I was going home to get a bath. They said, “So we’ll see you around lunchtime, then?” Yeah. Right.

Someone announced that people who needed medical attention would get seen, but they were short-staffed because this had happened at other stations too. This was the first indication any of us had that this was more than a one-off incident.

Someone said that anyone who wasn’t injured could go, except if they had soot round their mouth / nose. This started people asking each other, “Have I...?” Then some bright spark decided to turn on the station evacution alarm, so everyone (including some of the people sporting bandages) upped and left. When I got outside the station was surrounded by a police cordon and an officer led me right back round into the ticket office again. Everyone was complaining about the alarm. I tried to read my book but couldn’t concentrate, then I was handed more water and hugged by a very nice Community Support lady.

I put up with the alarm for a while, then decided if this goes on any longer it’s going to drive me utterly batshit, so I got up and tried to leave again. This time I almost got away, but an officer at the cordon told me to to go sit on this bus until they could take my name. This was one of the triage buses. People were asking if they could leave, and they told us that once they’d got our names we were free to go, but that we had to tell them if we were going (in case anything happened to us on the way home, or something). However, they strongly advised us to stay there and get checked out at the hospital.

Eventually they drove us to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel in a police-escorted bus convoy – that was kind of cool! I took one look at the queue and decided I’d really, finally had enough and set off on a very long walk from Whitechapel all the way across the city to Kentish Town where it turned out they were running a limited service to all stops northwards. This got me to within a bus ride from home, and thankfully the buses out here were still running relatively normally.

I didn’t have any idea that people had actually died on my train, nor the full extent of what had happened until I got round to thessalian’s and saw the news at about a quarter to five.