Communication instructor Amy Fountain was riding a tour bus in London with her husband July 7, when cell phones began ringing. At first she didn’t know what was going on.
Four explosions, three in London’s Underground train system and one on a bus, had rocked the city’s public transit system.
“The bus driver was asking people not to answer their cell phones during the tour, and then hers started ringing. She answered it and then told everyone on the bus. We turned on the radio to listen to the coverage,” Fountain said.
“The attacks probably changed the mood of our vacation, but things calmed down quickly,” she added.
The July 7 terrorist attacks killed 52 people and injured more than 300 others.
British officials are still looking for the people responsible for the subway bombings. Many suspects have been identified, though no one has been pinpointed yet for the tragedy.
Fountain said the city became quiet after the attacks.
“Where there had been people hustling and bustling on the streets and in shops, it became silent. A lot of stores closed for that day,” she said.
She said she and her husband were not really scared but were sad for the victims and their families.
“I thought about Sept. 11 a lot and the way that I felt when the attack was on America, though the attack in London was on a much smaller scale. It was still a tragedy,” Fountain said.
The morning after the attack, Fountain and her husband left their hotel and headed for the Tube, the underground transit system.
“We had some reservations as to whether we should ride. In the end we decided to get on it, and a lot of other people were riding it, too. We were a little on edge, but not scared,” Fountain said.
“How much do you want to let fear control you?” she asked. “We didn’t stop everything when we found out about the bombs; we did everything we wanted to do on our vacation.”
While riding the Tube, she and her husband went through tougher security than the day before, and she saw a lot of memorials already being put into place for the victims of the explosions, she said.
The attacks in London hit close to home for several students and faculty members this summer, including senior civil engineering major Jessie Doyle, who was attending summer school in the United Kingdom for an honors program.
Doyle and his classmates arrived in London a week after the July 7 attacks.
“Things had pretty much calmed down by the time we got there. Everyone was going about their daily routine,” Doyle said.
Doyle said he admired the way the people of London dealt with the attacks in comparison with how Americans dealt with the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I think that if you act scared and allow terrorists to affect your life in that way, you are letting them win, because that is exactly what they are trying to do,” Doyle said.
“In London, people were showing that they wouldn’t stand for it by staying calm and continuing to live the way they wanted to. We didn’t do that here,” he added.
Doyle said the people of London might have reacted as calmly as they did in the wake of the attacks because of similar experiences they had in the ’70s and ’80s.
“The people in the UK are more used to dealing with terror. I know that they had a lot of problems with the Irish Republican Army putting bombs in vehicles. They had worked with these situations before,” he said.
Alan Marcus, head of the history department, said the more people see these violent acts of terror, the less shocked they are.
“I think that the more often these types of events happen, the less impact they have. We start to get used to it,” he said.
In addition to the July 7 attacks, unexploded bombs were found in a vehicle at Luton Train Station in London, and on July 21, failed bombs were uncovered again in London’s transit system.