Madrid Bomb Attacks

Terrorist attacks on trains

Firstly, my deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the hundreds of people who died in this attack and also to the thousands of other people injured and traumatised by this.

Travelling in today and reading Metro and staring at the front page of every body else's paper it was like that horrible car crash mentality we have of not being able to take our eyes away from something so hideous. Seeing the pictures in Metro today and even when I first heard about the crash in the small hours of Thursday morning actually, I had that internal debate whether to blog it or not. (similar internal debate on The Transport Blog) I then thought - crikey only Wednesday itself I mentioned the lack of bins on the tube as the Tube's "fight" against terrorism.

Today, I find I can't stop myself but am only reporting on how this effects me and thoughts on my journey. I'm not political enough to have major thoughts, that I want to share, about who was behind this. I just know that the attack was wrong - and that's about as political as I'm going to get.

Parts of Metro really brought home the human element and the effects on commuters, and it was all horribly similar to reports of the biggest rail disaster we had in the UK since I started goingunderground.net - the Paddington Rail Crash, which I did report on, and I'm going to end this posts with some of those.

Obviously Metro couldn't be Metro without a piece saying that "Transport in London 'is safe'", and rightly talks about our fears of similar attacks taking place in London. In fact we're just about to have a "water cooler" discussion about it at work. Commuting will go on regardless - it has to.



Anyway, no more navel gazing, I'm sure there's going to be more than enough of that in loads of other blog posts about this attack. Back to those eye witness accounts:

"There were people all over the ground like in a disaster movie. Others were crushed against the walls. After a second explosion people dropped everything, bags and shoes and ran, many trampling on others. People didn't know which way to go. Some even went into the train tunnels without thinking other trains would be coming".

And from a doctor and this is what I remember most about Paddington - "On many bodies we could hear the person's mobile phones ringing as we carted them away."

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Friday, March 12, 2004 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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