Narrow escapes

[chinwag.choker]

Have you ever had a close shave involving a famous disaster? For instance, the famous airbus crash that departed South America for France and ended up in the sea, no survivors. One woman who was late for the flight was interviewed about her relief. Two days later she was killed in a car crash in Europe. (I know, it sounds like the plot for Final Destination but if your google the story. it actually is true).

Fortunately, a friend of mine was a little more lucky. She had been a passenger on a first leg of a flight from Frankfurt that had been carrying the bomb that went off over Lockerbie. It wasn't her plane that exploded, I think the bomb was transferred to another plane in London that took off for New York. This happened in the late 80's, investigators said the bomb was so unstable it could have gone off at any time. My friend is still alive and well.

My story is not so exciting. My family, myself, hubby and three kids were passing through Hoddle St ten minutes before the massacre took place. We were coming back from the inlaws (I think it was a Sunday night) and my hubby wanted to watch the last ten minutes of some tv show with his dad but I had a headache and demanded that we leave. He has never argued with me since.

Do you have a narrow escape story?

[fourandsixpants]

ref. lurker's story "Not me, but one of my nieces would normally have been on the underground train that was bombed in London except that she had had a big night the night before and had called in sick."

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My cousin works in London and would normally have been on the train in same tunnel when bomb went off..........my Auntie/his Mum lives in WA. She was beside herself for many hours as all comms were down. She cried when he eventually rang her to say that he was fine. He had slept in that morning which he never does and had caught a train 20 minutes later. His train that he was on was  stopped mid-journey when bombs went off. I believe he and other passengers were eventually allowed to leave their train/s on foot.

[goo**spew]

[cherry*135]

Yes there were problems with communicating as paintsew said. A lady I worked with was on holiday in London at that time and it took a long time till her family could contact her.

[twinkles**stars]

my foster aunt had no contact with her son and adult grandson who were in London at the time. From memory it was at leadt 8 hours before phone communications were back on line and then not constant.

[mainecoon1]

goo you have obviously not been involved in any serious accident where people around you have died, the mind can play all sorts of tricks survivor guilt is a form of depression.  I am not talking about a weak person here either our friend had been in the military for 15 odd years and was a senior rank that had spent plenty of time in Northern Ireland during the IRA years and seen lots of atrosities without it affecting her too much.  Maybe the trauma of the plane crash and seeing all the strangers around her die was the straw that broke the camels back. 

I am not a weak person either but it took me a long time to get over the bombing that occurred on my barracks even though I was not there at the time, I arrived back 2 hours after the bomb went of. 

[cherry*135]

I read  yesterday about a family in the US out driving in their car and they crashed in the back of a truck that was parked on the side of the highway. The truck shouldn't have really been parked there.

The mother, father and one son died in the crash.. another son and daughter survived, got out of the vehicle but were there to see the other members of their family burning to death in their car. The son  that survived committed suicide afterwards on his mothers birthday.  Thetwo children that survived were quite young (under 13)

The daughter lives with her aunt & uncle now and has been award $150+m damages (including her brother that committed suicide).

I can see what maincoon means by 'survivor guilt'. Also survivors, especially in a plane crash would have seen a lot of horrible things.. mangled bodies etc.

[cherry*135]

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@goo**spew wrote:

What do you mean all communication was down? Surely he had a mobile phone or could have found an internet cafe to contact his mum? I don't believe the London bombs affected communications infrastructure and I can't imagine the authorities would have restricted phone access at a time like this.

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London Bombings, 2005

Transport and telecoms disruption

Vodafone reported that its mobile telephone network reached capacity at about 10am on the day of the bombings, and it was forced to initiate emergency procedures to prioritise emergency calls (ACCOLC, the 'access overload control'). Other mobile phone networks also reported failures.

The BBC speculated that the telephone system was shut down by security services to prevent the possibility of mobile phones being used to trigger bombs. Although this option was considered, it became clear later that the intermittent unavailability of both mobile and landline telephone systems was due only to excessive usage.

ACCOLC was activated only in a 1 km (0.6 mi) radius around Aldgate Tube Station because key emergency personnel did not have ACCOLC-enabled mobile phones. The communications failures during the emergency sparked discussions to improve London's emergency communications system.

[azureline**]

I am getting the idea from reading the replies to the questions answered by posters that you are questioning the truthfulness of the shared stories?

The question was asked.................. posters replied................. were you wanting only verifiable stories?

Obviously not addressing AM3 here, sorry.

[goo**spew]

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@azureline** wrote:

I am getting the idea from reading the replies to the questions answered by posters that you are questioning the truthfulness of the shared stories?

The question was asked.................. posters replied................. were you wanting only verifiable stories?

Obviously not addressing AM3 here, sorry.

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LOL, azureline, she's now so desperate she's making up other poster's comments so that she can reply to them. Can anyone say desperate?

[azureline**]

what?