On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 16:29:24 +0000, asdf
wrote:

On Sun, 4 Dec 2005 15:27:12 +0000 (UTC), "Brimstone"
wrote:

No it wasn't. It was a speculation by the LUL controllers as to what
could have happened to cause several different simultaneous
incidents.

Why do they need to speculate ? If an explosion happens in a LUL
tunnel, it is going to create on almighty bang. Everybody within range
will
know about it almost immediately. Don't they have cameras ? People
who report to them ? How come it took the LUL controlers 1h or so to
find-out that it had been an explosion ?

Because the symptoms were indicative of massive power failures and no one on
the spot was in a position to tell them otherwise for about twenty minutes.
A terrorist attack is not the first thing that comes to mind.

I think there are two issues being confused here. There's no reason to
doubt that TPTB at LU spent the first 20 minutes (or hour or however
long) thinking a power surge was responsible for the incidents.
However, the public were told for *hours* afterwards that it was just
a power surge. For the whole morning, news organisations were
variously reporting up to 7 explosions on the Underground and up to 3
on buses, while being kept completely in the dark by official sources.
There was a definite witholding of information, be it at the behest of
LU, or the security services, or whoever.

I'm not particularly complaining, just trying to clarify.

Given that the whole picture was confused for days why is it considered
so dreadful (not by you necessarily given your comment above) that it
took hours for an official "story" to be provided? I know we are all
desperate for news NOW! due to 24 hour news channels but it is simply
not practical or in many cases desirable.

Surely the initial priorities are to get the injured out and treated, to
be clear what people are dealing with, get people out of potential
harm's way and then NOT to induce mass panic in the populace who were in
Central London? Then the system has to be checked to make sure it is
safe for the resumption of trains.

The Police take over the handling of these situations and I do not
consider LU can be considered to be some sort of culpable party to any
accusations of media manipulation. It's quite clear from what Tim
O'Toole had to say at the time that his intent was not to scare people
away from using the tube - indeed he wanted people to go about the
system as normal. Hence the minor miracle of most of the network being
up and working next day. I think it is fair to say that Londoners were
grateful for that, I certainly was, and were also very appreciative of
how Tube & Infraco staff dealt with the incident and then worked to
restore the damaged parts of the network.

We are having company wide briefings with Tim at present and part of the
session has a film about 7/7 in it. This not only forces people to face
up to the trauma but also helps people understand what was done, by whom
and allows Tim to say thank you. While it was a bit tough to be reminded
of it I thought the thank you to be most appropriate - and not really
for office people like me but those who drive the trains, work in the
stations, manage the operations etc who were in the front line that day.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!