Are you okay?? Heard about London explosions!!

[SharonBell]

I hope all my London friends are okay. I heard about the explosions on the news. It's horrible. My prayers and thoughts are with you.

Sharon

[LesFloyd]

I managed to get through to my Dad, who lives down there. And my friend, a tube driver, is okay.

This is shocking, shocking stuff... 

[JoyceCarter]

I've just heard over the net from one friend who works there some days (but not today).  The newsmen seem to be saying that the problems in the underground are from power surges, but that there have been explosions on buses as well - both on the same day?  It seems unlikely to me - oh, and I've just checked back, and they're now saying the problems with the tubes were actually explosions.

[SharonBell]

My husband was in NYC at a meeting on 9/11. I still shudder at what could have happened to him. This news from London is so distressing.

[Missy]

thanks Sharon.
I'm about half hour away from Central London. We're all ok, shaken up as you would expect.
My husband works at Canary Wharf, he's fine but not sure how he will get home from work tonight. I beleive all the tubes are down and the Docklands Light Railway. I said I will drive up and pick him up from somewhere but he doesn't want me to.
A few of my mates husbands are cab drivers, (the black cabs you see.) they've all reported in as ok, and my cousin turned back when she thought the trains were just playing up so her and her husband are safely indoors.
Earlier on there were loads of sirens, but it seems to have slowed down now. they must have been sending all the emergency vehicles up there.
I'm not an expert on politics or terrorism but killing innocent people on buses and trains is appalling whatever their beliefs. This has been coming IMO since 9/11. I didn't think we'd get away with it for this long to be honest. I lived through this as a child with the IRA, not on this scale but I remember bombs going off in London and hearing them from where I lived. My dad was a black cab driver and it used to worry me silly when I was a little girl.
I've had my daughter's school on the phone twice this morning. They are allowing the kids to ring home and check that everyone is ok if they are distressed. She was worried about her dad and then remembered my cousin and got in a state again. She's 12. That's when it becomes reality. Children worrying about their dad. All he did was go to work.
Thanks for asking. Appreciate it.

[JoyceCarter]

Very glad you're safe, Missy.

[santhere]

I hope everyone's okay, my father just went to London this morning, so we were getting really worried, but it turned out they were way out in the country in some congress house.

this is an atrocity, I hope they catch the ones who did it

[SharonBell]

Missy, I'm so relieved to hear that you and your family are safe. I was hysterical when 9/11 hit and I couldn't find my husband on the cell phone for 4 hours. He couldn't leave NYC, everything was shut down, the military was doing boxes overhead with fighter jets. The next night they evacuated his hotel, they thought the Empire State Building was going to collapse from all the weakened infrastructure and his hotel was next door. He finally got out on a TRAIN with military patrolling the rails. A nightmare. No one should have to live in terror or experience these atrocities.

xoxo

Sharon

[Ed]

The sad part is that it only takes a cell of four extremists to commit an atrocity like this and there's no way of guarding against it without changing everything about our way of life - for the worst.

I sometimes wonder if these people could see and fully appreciate the results of their actions, would they still do it?  I'm sad to say I think they would.

No doubt at least a handful of the injured were also innocent Muslims.  How does that sit with the bombers' ideology?  There's probably some kind of horseshit that covers it - "They're automatically martyrs to the cause."  Or something similar.

[Missy]

Stuff like this can't be stopped. You can't stop people getting on tubes and buses with bags. It's a horrible thought but we just have to live with it.
The people doing it are fanatics, nothing will stop them. It's life. If you live somewhere like London you have to accept that I suppose.
Thanks Sharon and Joyce.
Santhere glad your dad is ok.

[Walker]

I'm glad to hear that everyone and their loved ones are okay.
This is a travesty! These radicals are the scourge of the civilized world and cowards to boot. If they have something that important to say then they're going about it the wrong way. I agree with what was already stated: no matter what *religion* you are or what you believe in, there is no excuse for this type of disregard for innocent human life. It's a sad, sad day today, I'm just glad that no one here has suffered the loss of a loved one to the hands of these so called people.

[JoyceCarter]

I was giving an adult pupil a piano lesson this afternoon.  Half way through it, her husband arrived home - he'd been at Liverpool Street Station this morning when the explosion happened.  He wasn't hurt, but he was dead white - still, hours later - and went straight to bed.

I think it is amazing and wonderful that things aren't much worse, and we have a great deal to be thankful for in the skills and courage of the emergency teams.

[Ed]

We've heard from all our London friends to say they're all right.  One said the building next door to her offices was spattered with blood from the bus bomb. 

Like you say, Joyce, we're lucky that it wasn't much worse.  It sounds like there was a very effective emergency plan in place and it ran into action like clockwork.

Something that strikes me right away about things like this is the strength of the British public.  Part of what some would say is a siege mentality - there is a palpable feel of defiance, anger, outrage, but most of all defiance.  Within a short time, people were packing onto buses again, saying 'if we get blown up, we get blown up - we're determined not to let the terrorists win by changing our lives'.

Apparently two more unexploded bombs have been found and defused.  All the bombs were on timing devices, rather than being suicide bombers.  Perhaps now we can find out exactly who did this, like they found the Madrid train bombers through the mobile phone used in one unexploded bomb.  There isn't a punishment available in law that's fitting to crimes like this.

[Robert M. Blevins]

Blunt:

Punishment for the crime not available?
Doesn't England still hang people over at Old Bailey or something, if necessary. Or did they abolish the death penalty?

I posted this comment on another forum earlier today about the situation:

London is the same city that endured the Blitz.
The G-8 conference will still go on.
The Olympics will still go in London in 2012.
The people who tried to affect public policy or cower Londoners into submission by using violence just don't know Londoners that well... 

[JoyceCarter]

You're right about all of that, Robert.  Including that the death penalty was abolished.