Blood, Sweat & Tea, page 169 by Tom Reynolds
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mall television, and found out about the bombs.
I phoned up our resource centre, as I was on my day off, and they told me that I should come in and go to Newham station.
I then covered the Newham area along with others who had volunteered to come in and cover for the ambulances that were dealing with the aftermath of the attacks.
I think we had a lot less calls than we normally have; I was sitting on station for longer than normal until I, and another, manned an ambulance and took a matern-a-taxi to an Essex maternity department.
Once the shock had settled, I started to feel immense pride that the LAS, the other emergency services, the hospitals, and all the other support groups and organisations were all doing such an excellent job. To my eyes it seemed that the Major Incident planning was going smoothly, turning chaos into order.
What you need to remember is that this wasn't a major incident, but instead four major incidents, all happening at once.
I think everyone involved, from the experts, to the members of public who helped each other, should feel pride that they performed so well in this crisis.
London will not be beaten, we spent 20years under the shadow of the IRA, and are used to terrorists.
The medical staff at the BMA building did their best to save their 'civilian' staff from looking at the carnage that was left from the bomb on the bus.
The mobile phone networks appeared to be shut down - a good plan for potentially stopping more bombs from being triggered, but bad if you are trying to get into contact with relatives.
My brother considers himself very lucky; yesterday he took 40 schoolchildren to the science museum - right through the affected area.
I'm back to 'normal' work tomorrow, I wonder what it'll be like.
It took a year before the police admitted to closing down the mobile phone network. Even now I hear stories about the blasts that contradict what eyewitnesses were telling me during and just after the attack