Tube driver repeatedly told blast was ’only power surge’ as he pleaded for help
Source: dailymail.co.uk
The driver of a Tube train blown up in the July 7 bombings desperately tried to get help to his passengers - but was repeatedly told it was ‘only a power surge’, the inquest heard yesterday.Ray Whitehurst said he and a colleague made a total of four calls for help to London Underground operators, telling them a bomb had exploded on the train near Edgware Road and medical assistance was needed.
But they kept getting the same answer, the inquest heard - and at one stage they even appeared to have been hung up on.
Damage from the Edgware Road blast that officials thought was a power surge.
The Tube driver said: ‘I informed the signalman a bomb had gone off on my train and he said ’no, it’s all right, don’t worry about it, it’s only a power surge’.
‘I asked (him) to inform emergency services and get me assistance down there and told him that the second carriage just didn’t seem to exist any more.’
After leaving his cab, he bumped into another train driver, Dave Matthews, who had approached the bombed train.
He said: ‘Dave asked me where the emergency services were and I said ’Well, they keep saying it’s just a power surge and not to worry’.’
He asked Mr Matthews to try calling again ‘to see if he could get a different answer from them’.
Mr Whitehurst went on: ‘The signalmen said emergency services had been called and they were at the station. I believe Dave Matthews was also told it was a power surge.’
He added that the signalman put the phone down on him.
‘I phoned up again. I was getting pretty annoyed that there hadn’t been any medical staff down by that time,’ he went on.
This time he was finally promised that assistance would be sent and some paramedics arrived on the scene shortly afterwards.
Describing the responses he had received over the phone, he said: ‘I got the impression that nobody really knew what they were doing.’
He added: ‘I’m thinking, "I’m the driver, I know what’s happened, I’ve seen bomb-damaged trains before".’
He told how when the paramedics did arrive, the scene of carnage was too much for one of them.
Mr Whitehurst said: ‘I said to them to be prepared because it’s not normal injuries you’re about to see.’
One paramedic sat down next to a man with ‘a hole the size of a tennis ball’ in his leg and, Mr Whitehurst said, ‘it appeared he wanted to vomit’.
He also told of the moment the train was rocked by the blast, when he felt ‘the whole world just went mental on me.’
He said: ‘I felt the front of the carriage rise and it was as if I had hit a brick wall.
‘The train just stopped dead in the air and came down with a thump, and I hit my head on the windscreen.
‘I was then thrown back, hit my head on the back and jarred my back, and I thought "this is going to hurt".
‘The next thing I knew there was all this dust... I heard the worst screaming I had ever heard in my life, coming from behind me in the passenger carriages.’
At first he thought his train had crashed into the train next to it but soon realised something more sinister had occurred.
He said: ‘I could see people flailing about on the track and my immediate thought was "oh no, a bomb’s gone off".’
Several passengers started banging on the door of the driver’s cab, asking him to open it, he said. But it appeared to have buckled on its hinges.
He said: ‘I informed the passengers what had happened and they were safer where they were at the time because of the dust in the tunnel.’
One man, however,would not listen, the inquest heard.
Mr Whitehurst said: ‘Unfortunately, one passenger pushed past me, jumped down on the track and then demanded that I leave everyone and take him to safety.’
But Mr Whitehurst, who had been a train driver for 30 years or more, was concerned about everyone else, the hearing was told.
Once paramedics were on the scene, he was ordered to leave but he refused.
‘I said "No, I would rather stay to see my passengers are all right",’ he said.
He helped open two sets of train doors so that passengers could be brought off the train.
He also tried to perform a heart massage on fatally-injured father-of-two Michael Brewster, who had fallen into a crater blown in the floor of the bombed carriage, he said.
Asked why there was no mention of this in his witness statement, he replied: ‘That’s one of the things I blocked out, I’m afraid.’
The one heart-warming sight, however, was that of passengers helping each other, the inquest heard.
The train driver said: ‘(They) were all races, all religions and I suddenly felt so humble just looking at them helping people.’
Mr Whitehurst has not driven a Tube train since the day of the atrocities in 2005.
Article from: dailymail.co.uk
New 7/7 Bombing Photo Contradicts Official Story
By Paul Joseph Watson | Sott.net
A new photo released on the fourth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks in London appears to contradict the government’s official story that Muslims with backpack bombs were responsible for the Tube and bus bombings which killed 52 people.
The image seemingly dovetails with a survivor’s eyewitness statement that the bombs on the Tube trains were placed underneath the carriage and that suicide bombers were nowhere to be seen.
Debunkers have attempted to dismiss this vital hole in the official story by claiming that questions about eyewitnesses stating bombs were placed under the train have been explained. London Guardian journalist Mark Honigsbaum interviewed witnesses who stated that "tiles, the covers on the floor of the train, suddenly flew up, raised up," when the bombs were detonated. Honigsbaum later said that the quotes were taken out of context when they were cited as evidence that the bombs were planted under the trains - and debunkers duly seized on this in an attempt to dismiss the entire issue.
However, one very reliable eyewitness statement is very clear in making it plain that no suicide bombers were involved, and the bomb could only have been planted underneath the train, contradicting the official story completely.
The words of 7/7 survivor Bruce Lait, who was just yards from the explosion when it happened, cannot be taken out of context.
Lait, a victim of the Aldgate Station bombing, described to the Cambridge Evening News how he and his partner were sitting nearest to the bomb when it detonated.
"We’d been on there for a minute at most and then something happened. It was like a huge electricity surge which knocked us out and burst our eardrums. I can still hear that sound now," he said.
He and Crystal were helped out of the carriage. As they made their way out, a policeman pointed out where the bomb had been.
"The policeman said ’mind that hole, that’s where the bomb was’. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don’t remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag," he said.
In his statement, Lait makes clear four things - according to what he witnessed, there was no suicide bomber, there was no rucksack or backpack that could have contained a bomb, there was nobody around the location where the bomb exploded, and the bomb appeared to have been placed underneath the train.
The fact that the policeman had to warn them of a "hole" as they were being led out to safety obviously suggests that the hole was in the floor and therefore a potential hazard to them exiting the train.
The photo displayed is currently being carried on the Daily Mail website with the caption; "Warped and blackened by the blast, this is the Piccadilly Line carriage where Jermaine Lindsay’s bomb detonated at Russell Square station. A forensics officer in white rubber gloves inches his way along the floor - itself sheared away in the blast, exposing metal beams - searching for the smallest of clues." Note that Bruce Lait’s comments refer to the Aldgate tube bombing. This photo is from the Russell Square bombing, but it appears to dovetail his testimony that the bombs were planted under the train.
Despite the fact that the image is cut off at the point where the hole begins, one can clearly see it at the very bottom of the picture. The cabling underneath the floor cover is exposed and the area to the right of the hole is raised up, as if pressure has been exerted from underneath.
The contention that there were no suicide bombers actually on the train at all, as Bruce Lait contends, is consistent with other evidence surrounding the attacks.
The fact that the ID’s of all the so-called suicide bombers were found in pristine condition right next to where the bombs went off strongly suggests the planting of evidence to frame patsies. The ID’s would have had a reasonable chance of surviving relatively unscathed if the bomb was not in the backpack with them, but underneath the train.
On the other hand the backpack bombs could have just been the diversionary blasts to enable patsies to be framed, just like the planes flying into the towers acted as the diversionary cover for the explosives planted inside the World Trade Center.
Remember that the London Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch themselves reported that from studying the behavior of the alleged suicide bombers before the attacks via CCTV footage, the bombers "did not fit the preconceived terrorist profile."
The suspects were seen to be arguing with cashiers, walking in and out of shops, including McDonalds, and "bumping into people" in the minutes before the blasts - hardly the behavior of people who are in the final crucial moments of planning a terror attack in which they will be killed, and who wish to go unnoticed.
"I’ve seen the CCTV footage of these people. They do not appear to be on their way to commit any crime at all," a London Metropolitan Police representative said.
"The roundtrip tickets, the fact that one of them spent a lot recently repairing his car and one of them had a family and was the teacher of the disabled and underprivileged children, it doesn’t ring right," said Paul Beaver, a security and defense expert in London with close police contacts. "If you had that much commitment, how are you going to take your life? It’s happened in Palestine, but these people were brought up in the UK."
Turning back to the question of devices planted under the train, the get out clause of the "exercise" or "drill" scenario would have also provided culpability cover if investigators started asking questions about objects underneath the carriage.
As we have exhaustively documented, such a drill did take place on the morning of 7/7.
A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for a company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
For individuals to plant bombs underneath trains and secure them in place without being caught, they would need to secure access to the trains. In this scenario, London Underground could have been told that a dummy device was to be placed underneath the train as part of an exercise to test security and alertness. When the real attacks happened some LU officials would have been alarmed but their suspicions would have dampened when it was revealed that the bombs were carried in backpacks, meaning that the drill was just a strange ’coincidence’.
Read the full article at: sott.net
7/7 Ripple Effect (VIDEO)
Drills Identical to Terror Plot Held on Same Day, At Same Stations (VIDEO)
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Andy Thomas - The Truth Agenda
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Webster G. Tarpley - 9/11 Synthetic Terror
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