London Bombing - Communications Failure

Londoners will remember 7/7 for ever. On this day terrorists detonated bombs on London's underground trains and a bus. These coordinated acts of terror killed 52 people and injured 700 people. Due to the coordinated nature of the bombings in quick succession, telephone networks were overwhelmed,  organized emergency response were uncoordinated and more lives were lost in the ensuing confusion. To add insult to the injury, it started raining right after the bombing.

In emergency medicine, there is this term called the 'golden hour'. This golden hour refers to a limited time window within which, medical intervention can help save a patient's life. During this very crucial golden hour, ambulances were dispatched to incorrect locations. Emergency personnel's radio network failed to work. They were unable to contact their main operations center and hence their response was not as effective as they hoped it to be. Telephone networks (both mobile & land lines) were overwhelmed as the volume of calls increased more than what the telephone network was designed to handle. In such situations, telephone companies start blocking "non-essential" calls, allowing only the emergency calls to go through. This stunted the communication and response even further.

Personnel from different first responder groups like fire, police & ambulance were not able to communicate with each other or with the doctors. They were also not able to locate each other physically and were unaware of each others locations and activities. Also, passengers in the trains that had been bombed were not able to communicate with the train drivers. The passengers had no means to communicate with the train drivers. Even the train drivers were not able to communicate with each other as their radio antenna was damaged by the explosion.

Situational awareness which is very crucial for dispatching necessary resources to affected patients was compromised due to the communication failures.

There were 6 major hospitals within half a mile of the site of the bus bombing. Yet, some hospitals were handling very high patient volumes where as some hospitals did not get any patients, resulting in an inbalanced distribution of patients. Ambulances were not dispatched to the proper locations due to the failure of communications.Despite communication failure, the heroic efforts of doctors, first responders & police helped save many lives. The relief efforts would have been effective had the communications network functioned as planned.



Instead of relying on CBradios and telephones, a much better solution would be to use internet based communication technologies. Also, proper software platform that provides HazardNetworking would have helped identify, study & respond to the crisis. It would also have provided much better Situational awareness  during the crisis.