Tavistock sq

Aussies tell of carnage
By Matthew Hall
London
July 10, 2005



An Australian couple who survived the London bus bomb that killed 13 of their fellow passengers have told an incredible story of survival.

Tania Calabrese, 29, and Tony Cancellera, 34, were sitting on the top deck of the No. 30 double-decker bus when it exploded near Tavistock Square in London.

Two other Australians, Catherine Klestov, 26, of Brisbane, and Louise Barry, 23, of Port Stephens, also survived the bus bomb.

Ms Calabrese, of Five Dock, Sydney, held on to the seat in front as the bus collapsed around her and debris flew.

Her boyfriend, of Leichhardt, was thrown by the blast and knocked unconscious.

Ms Calabrese described the horror around the bus as she searched the street for her missing boyfriend.

"I only realised Tony wasn't next to me when I got off the bus," she said. "I was walking around and then I saw all the dead people everywhere.

"Then I started freaking out and realising what had happened and realised that he wasn't there.

"I went around the back of the bus. He wasn't there but there were people all over the road. There were bits of bodies. I don't know if they were male or female. There were people with missing legs, pieces of body chunks with clothes on them, people hanging from the top of the back of the bus with bits of clothes hanging off them.

The couple were sitting in the middle of the top deck of the bus, opposite the stairs, when the explosion occurred.

They had been travelling from their West London home to work in the City of London when the attacks took place.

Ms Calabrese said she had no idea the bus had been bombed, and initially thought they had been involved in a traffic accident. "I don't remember a bang," Ms Calabrese said. "I didn't hear anything. It was just like a violent shaking. It felt like a really bad car accident.

"I thought something had hit us from behind.

"Then the shaking was uncontrollable. I couldn't control my eyes. As soon as I felt the impact blood flew out of my nose metres in front of me. I remember grabbing on to the railing in front of me while the bus was shaking.

"I was thinking, 'OK this is going to stop', but then I could hear creaking metal and the floor around my seat started falling down. I just held on to the chair in front of me. The floor started slowly twisting and I ended up not that high off the ground.

"I couldn't walk down the stairs because the bus was flattened. I just jumped off.

"I landed on the floor and looked around. It was so quiet it was freaky. There was something like smog all around but it was actually fibres from the seats so there was like dust everywhere and black smoke.

"It was really quiet, and there were people lying all over the floor. There were people with cuts on their faces and everyone had nosebleeds. I was holding on to my face as well." Realising that a catastrophic event had happened, Ms Calabrese searched for her boyfriend.

"I don't know how long it took to find Tony. It seemed like forever but it might have only been two minutes," she said.

"I was screaming and calling out his name.

"I finally saw him on the road from a distance. When I got to him, his eyes were flickering and his body was convulsing. His head was in a puddle of blood.

"He looked like he was in one piece but he was completely out of it. I was screaming for him to wake up and then a man showed up. I screamed, 'Please help me. This is my partner'. The man leant down with me to help Tony, and then I freaked out, and for some reason I decided I had to look for my handbag. I don't know why. I went running around and came back without it, and then Tony started to wake up.

"It was really quiet but maybe that was because I was deafened by the blast. I couldn't hear anything except screams.

"All my clothes were ripped and the hem on my pants was blown off by the blast as well as the buckles on my shoes. My jacket was ripped everywhere and my scarf had blood all over it. They put us in an ambulance because they were worried about Tony's back and his head.

"They wrapped him in padding and put him on a stretcher and took us to hospital."

They have been released from University College Hospital, but as they lay in beds there on Thursday night the couple were interviewed by police. Authorities were eager to glean any information the Sydney couple may have had about the events leading up to the explosion, especially as it was unclear whether the bomb was detonated remotely or was the work of a suicide attack. There were suspicions that a male and female couple had fled the bus moments before the explosion, indicating that two terrorists may have been sitting next to those they would murder moments later.

The mystery couple were originally sitting at the back of the top deck. They fled as it sat in the traffic around Kings Cross and Russell Square Underground stations, where a bomb had earlier exploded below the streets.

"We saw two people run off the bus before the bomb went off," Mr Cancellera said.