Bombs in subways. Bomb in buses. All details fuzzy. Story obviously being managed.

WikiNews is on it. Here is a Google News link.

Here is one particular disturbing pic of some people trapped in the underground in a station filled with smoke.

People in London are saying on IRC that cell phones are not working.

The original BBC story on the explosions said it was an electrical explosion. They recently changed the story's lead to say there was a bomb on both a bus and the underground. It is ironic that in the first hours after the WTC bombing, it was believed to be a transformer explosion.

News stations are now saying it was definitely a coordinated attack. Very little information is being released right now. It is very clear big shit is going down.

If you work in NYC, I suggest that you wait till noon to go to work.

Blair just gave a statement. Its officially terrorism.

For those picking up on this as they wake up, here is a timeline of events so far.

Wow. We will have to wait and see what the whole story is.

I'm currently in transit, logged on from Manchester Airport in northern England (just flew in from Dubrovnik, Croatia). I'm actually on my way to London Heathrow as I type this. The terminal monitors are full of news about the bombings, but I'm being assured that flights are moving normally.

I'm only spending one night in London, and then heading on to JFK in New York.

The timing though, is unsettling. My original plan was to arrive in London this afternoon, then spend the day sightseeing tomorrow, and then fly out tomorrow afternoon.

Or in other words, had I arrived 24 hours earlier, I might well have been within the radius of one of those bomb blasts. :/

Right now I'm keeping an eye on the news, but sticking to my original itinerary. If I run into any eyewitness stuff, I'll blog it as I can, but my internet access is of course spotty as I'm on the move.

Will keep you posted,

Elonka

Elonka wrote:
The timing though, is unsettling. My original plan was to arrive in London this afternoon, then spend the day sightseeing tomorrow, and then fly out tomorrow afternoon.

That's some timing you got there Elonka.

Right now I'm keeping an eye on the news, but sticking to my original itinerary. If I run into any eyewitness stuff, I'll blog it as I can, but my internet access is of course spotty as I'm on the move.

Will keep you posted,

Please do that. You are MemeStreams's woman on the scene...

Rattle wrote:
Please do that. You are MemeStreams's woman on the scene...

Not too much to report in the way of eyewitness stuff, but here's my current status:

As I write this, it's 12:30 p.m. local time, on Friday. I arrived at Heathrow around 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon local time yesterday, which was about 7 hours after the attacks took place. Traffic at Heathrow was understandably a mess, near grid-lock. There were temporary signs set up around the airport indicating whether or not trains were running. At the time I arrived, the signs said that trains to Paddington were running "as normal".

Normally I figure out accommodation by going to a "Hotel Board" information kiosk, and they assign me to a local B&B. This time though, when I went up and asked for a local place to stay, they just kind of shrugged. They said everything local was booked solid, except for four high-priced hotels, the lowest cost of which was 100 pounds per night (roughly $200).

The line/queue for taxis was enormous. Fortunately, I had a local friend (one of my GemStone players) who came to pick me up at the airport. But what was normally a 20-minute drive turned into 90+ minutes of wading through traffic. I spent a lot of time out on the curb, in a light London drizzle, shivering with other travellers who were waiting for their own pickup while the cars inched by. I did notice an ABC news crew waiting in the same area. Several men with what looked like literally tons of equipment, waiting along with everyone else for their ride to come get them.

Phones, btw, were working fine, with no wait. I was keeping in regular touch with my own ride by calling from payphones to his cellphone. About every half-hour I'd call him and he'd give me his current location.

We finally did connect at the airport, and then we drove around looking for hotels that might not be on the usual "booked solid" network. Most places we tried/called were full, but we finally found a reference from one of those hotels for a less expensive hotel/B&B in Burnham. They did have a room, at "only" 85 pounds a night, so I took it as best available.

As a quick aside, it's an absolutely beautiful area. I'm off in the direction of Windsor Castle and Eton, about 30 miles west of London, a mile from the River Thames, way way out in the country. I took a walk this morning, and I feel like I stepped into Hobbiton. Lovely lopsided houses, winding lanes through tunnels of greenery, beautiful flowers everywhere, and the lazy clip clop of horses plodding by. I halfway expect to see Galadriel, Frodo, or Legolas come striding by. :)

On the "telly", the news is of course full of the attacks. It's especially an emotional hit, because all of the (yesterday) newspapers had full-page elation about how London just won the 2012 Olympics bid, which they're especially gleeful about because they beat France for it. So it was quite ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Elonka wrote:

News channels aside, the people themselves (at least those I've been running across), have been taking it in stride. There are a few clusters of people around the news feeds, but other than that life is pretty much normal. On the plane from Manchester, it was mostly business travelers doing what seemed to be a daily commute. I eavesdropped on a few conversations, but the closest I heard to any concern was two seatmates who commented that the taxi situation at Heathrow might be a bit rough, and there'd be some cab-sharing going on. After we took off, the pilot did an announcement but simply said that he didn't forecast any flight delays due to "earlier events in London". And from what I've been seeing of live news feeds around the city, life on the street seems to be chugging along pretty much normally. Sort of like the bombs were small splashes that made a few ripples, and then the normal flow of London life moved back in and erased any sign of what had happened. [...]

I would imagine that there's probably at least a few old folks there walking around saying to themselves, "Just a half-dozen bombs? That's hardly worth turning on the raid sirens."

Hawaii would have been safe. When are you coming to visit?

P.S., I quoted your two entries from London at http://www.grunchley.com.

--
grunchley
grunchley@grunchley.com
http://www.grunchley.com

Rattle wrote:
Please do that. You are MemeStreams's woman on the scene...

Aside from some delays getting a hotel room and a ride from the airport, Elonka reports London is as normal as it could be after experiencing a terrorist attack.

News channels aside, the people themselves (at least those I've been running across), have been taking it in stride. There are a few clusters of people around the news feeds, but other than that life is pretty much normal. On the plane from Manchester, it was mostly business travelers doing what seemed to be a daily commute. I eavesdropped on a few conversations, but the closest I heard to any concern was two seatmates who commented that the taxi situation at Heathrow might be a bit rough, and there'd be some cab-sharing going on. After we took off, the pilot did an announcement but simply said that he didn't forecast any flight delays due to "earlier events in London". And from what I've been seeing of live news feeds around the city, life on the street seems to be chugging along pretty much normally. Sort of like the bombs were small splashes that made a few ripples, and then the normal flow of London life moved back in and erased any sign of what had happened. The main signposts remaining seem to be a couple closed tube stations, and some quickly-erected barriers around the bus that was blown up. I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what happened with that one. For example, one report says that the bus was packed with people who had streamed out of the tube stations after the initial explosions. And the top of the bus was clearly blown off. But there are only reports of two fatalities on that bus. The main carnage seems to have been below ground.

Signing off for now, your Memestreamer in the field,

Thanks for the report!

the people themselves (at least those I've been running across), have been taking it in stride.

Of course the British are taking it in their stride we had 20 years of IRA bombs and one nutter who blow up a gay pub and targeted racially mixed areas of London. In the afternoon after the bombs the jokes were already circulating blaming the French Olympic Bid committee.
I live in a city which according to wikipedia will soon have a majority of Asian people and when doing my degree and during the first Gulf War I lived within 400 yards of the Sadaam Hussein mosque in Birmingham , UK. You learn to get on with things. I don't have any more of a sense of threat than I had last week even though my work place had the bomb squad there a couple of months ago because of a suspected Anthrax package which turned out to be artificial snow residue from a Christmas display. They didn't even fully evacuate the building. Now is not the time to look at my Asian friends and Muslim colleages with suspicion or anger. That would be like blaming all Irish people for the IRA or all Americans for the actions of Bush. Good or bad we are all individuals and there would be no excuse for panicking and certainly (and I'm sure Elonka would never suggest or forgive it) no excuse for turning on neighbours and friends.
Adam in Leicester
Leicester on Wikipedia

This fascinates me. Elonka goes to London and bombs explode. Coincidence? I think not.

Elonka, where exactly were you on November 22, 1963?

grunchley wrote:
This fascinates me. Elonka goes to London and bombs explode. Coincidence? I think not.

Elonka, where exactly were you on November 22, 1963?

Hmm, I'd have to check my notes, but probably Montessori. ;)