Like many people living in London 10 years ago I was caught up in those awful events. At the time I was head of City operations for Pret, looking after 60 or so outlets around the City. I was sat in Kingsway conducting an appraisal with one of my team when I first heard that something was wrong, at this time the talk was of power cuts and non running tube trains but as a little time passed it became apparent that there was more to this. The two of us started to walk towards the City as I got in contact with the rest of my team. As we walked we found out that there had been a bombing but details were sketchy, I had arranged to meet other members of my time close to Fenchurch Street which was just as well as by this time the mobile network was down. Our head office (being situated inside Victoria station) had been evacuated and to all intents and purposes was out of action.
As I met with other members of my team we formulated a plan, we needed to ensure that all our team members were accounted for and that everyone was uninjured, we also needed to check that our shops had not been damaged, finally we needed to work out what to do, did we continue to trade or shut up shop? We split up and started to visit our shops to see how things were having arranged to meet up in a specific location a bit later on.
This part of London was just going crazy, people were milling around, there were police everywhere and all you could here was the sound of sirens and helicopters. Roads were cordoned off, especially around Aldgate tube station and what was especially concerning was that within that cordon was one of our shops….
More later
random outpourings 