Peter Swan’s story – remembering 7/7

Peter Swan MBE – Clinical Team Manager

I was a station officer at St John’s Wood and it was a very ordinary Thursday. I was going to a different station and then I got a call at 9.05am telling me to go to Edgware Road.

There were two crews on scene when I arrived and I could see people coming out of the station. They looked sooty and they looked scared. I was hearing it was some sort of crash and that people were dead.

I was scene commander and my heart was pounding as I took everything in. Of course we have training for major incidents but you hope you won’t need it. But the training does kick in.

A major incident was declared but we still didn’t really know what was going on but that’s when you start assigning roles.

We had a lot of walking injured so I set up a casualty clearing centre in the M&S nearby. This meant we could triage and treat patients and get them onto ambulances. We did then start to get some patients with very serious injuries – people who had lost limbs.

I was meeting the fire brigade and police and everyone had this thought in the back of their mind about whether there is going to be another bomb. I was very worried about our people in the tunnel.

Even when we had managed to get our patients to hospital everyone was very jumpy.

And then when we debriefed I got to hear more about what our crews had faced in the tunnel and it was horrific to hear what they had experienced. It was truly frightening.

I remember seeing motorway signs saying London is closed and I never want to see that again.

I’m glad I was there to play a role in our response and I’m really so proud of the people who were in the tunnels for so long giving everyone the best chance.

It changed the Service in many ways: improved the service in many ways. Our training and kit and communication is better now.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard I had been awarded an MBE the following year. We don’t do this job for awards and I really felt like I was only doing my job. But it was very emotional to collect it and I will always feel that it was an award for everyone who worked that day.

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