'There was a big bang and a ground vibration - we could all feel it'

Scarborough businessman Peter Howgate, 65, described feeling the full force of the huge bang that ripped the top of a London bus clean off. He said: "There was a big bang and a ground vibration - we could all feel it. The air moved."

Mr Howgate arrived at Kings Cross station minutes after the initial blast, having travelled south on the 6.38am service from Seamer.

"The police were trying to get this great crush of people out of the station, but at the same time trying to organise a rescue mission," he said. "We saw people being taken away in ambulances. Everybody was very calm, they were just trying to keep moving. A lot of people had mobiles. They were trying to pick up text messages."

David Simister, from Harrogate, was with a party from Yorkshire Water in London which was heading from their hotel to catch a train from Kings Cross.

He said: "It's absolutely appalling, like a scene from the film, The Day After Tomorrow. People were out on the streets milling about, but everything on the roads stopped moving.

"At the time there was a lot of misinformation about power surges on the Underground but we saw a man being helped out of Euston station covered in blood. We're just so grateful not to have been involved in any of the blasts."

"We were in a taxi heading for King's Cross when traffic ground to a halt. We didn't know why so we decided to get out and walk but, when we got to the station we were met by the police who told us to clear the area."

Norwich Union worker Robert Harrington, 32, of Clifton, York, described seeing the first bleeding and soot-blackened passengers come out of Kings Cross tube station after he arrived in London for a business meeting at about 9.30am.

"They started come out of the station covered in smoke," he said. "One woman came out with a big gash on her head. She looked quite shaken up. The people we saw were some of the first to come out, they didn't appear to know what had happened. I heard one person say on their phone: "I think there's been a bit of a crash".

"There was a lot of shock and confusion. We were just walking trying to get from place to place and find out what was going on."

Haxby businessman Lance Bennett was staying in a hotel in Russell Square at the time of the blasts - near the third tube explosion.

But for a last-minute change of plan, he might have been catching a train at Kings Cross at 9am when the explosions first began. His long journey home took a total of 11 hours.

"We were lucky we decided to get a later train," he said. "I've never seen London like it," he said. "It was very strange - surreal. There was no traffic. The hospitals were all cordoned off."

:: A surreal quiet in an empty city

Visitors to London described an eerie, surreal quiet in the capital with streets empty of people and normally gridlocked roads traffic-free.

Network Rail employees Trevor Marshall and Philip Scott were staying in a hotel near Russell Square when the bombs went off.

They heard a 'muffled bang' and were kept inside their hotel until 2pm - with police warning all guests they would be arrested if they attempted to set foot outside.

"Some of our colleagues went into the underground and tried to rescue people," said Mr Marshall, of Kirk Hammerton. "Members of the public were being brought in off the street to our hotel. There were people in there who didn't know where their families were - some parents came in. "We feel extremely lucky."

Scarborough man Keiran Brennan, who works at Heathrow airport, spent much of the day walking across the city attempting to find a way back up north. "A lot of people were standing around talking about what was going on," he said.

Two York teachers heard family members living and working in London were all right before they had even heard about the bombings.

They both received phone calls from their husbands while they were at work.

Janet and Keith Gailer, who live in South Bank, York, have a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Rose, in London.

Margot and Michael Gill, who live in Copmanthorpe, have a son, Alex, who is at medical school.

Janet said last night that Matthew works near Aldgate and would have taken the Underground to get there, but on this occasion he had stayed with a friend and walked in.

Rose works in Hammersmith but lives in Hackney and would normally have caught a train to Liverpool Street Station and transferred to the Underground to travel on to Hammersmith via Edgware Road. But yesterday she was slightly late, so had taken a different route into work.

After checking on his sister, Matthew sent an email to his father to let his parents know that they were both all right.

Alex had texted his father as soon as he heard about the bombings to let his parents known that both he and his girl friend, Leah, who works in the City were bothfine.

Updated: 10:30 Friday, July 08, 2005