Amid Terror, a Resigned Calm

The first blasts came from deep under the city, muffled by tons of earth and concrete. A 30-minute pause, and another, louder, explosion in a stately square near the British Museum. And then, an eerie quiet.

The people of London had been bracing for this attack for years. When it came, sirens screamed and helicopters buzzed over a city under attack, but a surreal sense of calm seemed to prevail.

“I’m shocked like everyone else, but everyone knew something like this might happen one day,” said Cristina Perez, who was evacuated from the subway after the attacks. “You can’t let something like this stop your life. I don’t plan to change anything.”

But if Londoners proved resilient, they were tested by an assault on their central nervous system, a transportation network known the world over for the colorful Tube map and red double-decker buses that flashed across television news bulletins Thursday.

The No. 30 bus from Hackney to Marble Arch was passing in front of the British Medical Assn. in leafy Tavistock Square when the bomb blast sent its roof 30 feet into the air.

Afterward, the severed roof of the bus lay on the ground in front of the vehicle, the blue seats of its upper deck now open to the air, and the yellow rails that riders hang onto for support were twisted like so many broken toothpicks.

Ambulances raced to the scene and emergency workers swathed the victims, many shivering from shock, in shiny silver blankets.

A woman in a red dress lay prone on the ground, scattered with debris, as two other commuters bent over comforting her and trying to stanch the flow of blood.

The scenes from the shattered Underground were murky, captured in ghostly photographs from commuters’ cellphone cameras as they inched their way to safety through the smoky tunnels of the subway system.

“People managed to remain calm, but there was screaming from the carriage in front, which was disconcerting,” Joanne Smith, a passenger on the Piccadilly line train near Liverpool Street, told the BBC. “People were helpful, looking after each other, passing around water and mints ... trying to convey messages up and down the train.”

Unni Krishnan, a doctor, was walking to the Russell Square subway station when he saw people emerging from the depths covered in blood. He helped tend to the wounded at a nearby hotel.

“They had head injuries; one had eye injuries,” he said. “A lot of people had minor injuries, but many were in shock and crying, so we tried to comfort them.”

David Bodnariuk, a student at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who is spending a semester studying international law in London, expressed admiration for the strength of Londoners, who endured the horrific Nazi bombings of World War II and a later campaign by the Irish Republican Army.

“In the midst of this horror was a humanity of monumental proportions,” said Bodnariuk, who witnessed the aftermath of the bombing near the Russell Square Station. “People running blankets to the scene, paramedics keeping the injured safe and for the most part smiling. Maybe it was the sense of euphoria of being alive, but the injured parties had smiles on their faces. The London people and emergency operators deserve some kind of credit for what went on today.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also paid tribute to the stoicism and resilience of the people of London and said the terrorists must not be allowed to succeed.

“It is a very sad day for the British people,” he said, just one day after the city threw an enormous party to celebrate winning the 2012 Olympic Games, “but we will hold true to the British way of life.”

Later in the day, with the Tube shut down, the streets were crowded with city workers sporting jackets and windbreakers beginning the long walk home, or standing in long lines to get money from cash machines in the vain hope of finding a taxi on the way.

No one appeared scared, exactly, but comments in the cash queue were of the nervously jocular variety: “It’s just like those old war films: We’ll be singing ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ next,” said Alistair Moncrieff, an environmental expert.

Despite the relative calm, police cars with sirens blaring speeded down the streets throughout the day. And hordes of Metropolitan Police were sent into the city from the suburbs, so when people asked police officers for directions, the officers tended to respond, “I have no idea. I’m not from around here. I’ve just been shipped in.”

Monika Kashyap, a project manager for a railway company who was walking near Russell Square, consulted a photocopy of a city map to determine the best route to her grandmother’s home, where she planned to spend the night. With the subway system and buses shut down, Kashyap said she had no way of getting to her own home in East London.

Kashyap was angry and upset by the bombings but said she believed that terrorist attacks on the city were all but inevitable.

“I thought something like this might happen, but it’s still a shock. The Underground is an open risk, but I have to use the Tube to get to work whether I like it or not. At the end of the day, if I try to change everything, I won’t have a life.”

It was overcast and drizzling for much of the day, but in the late afternoon, the sun came out and London briefly regained an odd appearance of normality.

In the popular West End district, restaurants and pubs weren’t exactly packed, but there were healthy crowds filling the pubs and sitting at outdoor tables at restaurants. At one pub, a TV on the wall had the news on but patrons were not glued to the screen.

The rain started again around 6:30 p.m., and the mood darkened. It was impossible to ignore that it was not a typical day.

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Times staff writers John Daniszewski and Sarah Price Brown in London and J. Michael Kennedy in Los Angeles and special correspondent Vanora McWalters in London contributed to this report.