The emergency services and the London Ambulance Service in particular need to review its communication strategies and equipment in order to cope with major incidents such as the 7 July bombing, a report by the London Assembly has concluded.
The use of mobile telephones to communicate between senior staff and the inability to communicate underground was also highlighted as having caused problems and delays with the response to the terrorist attack.
London Underground’s own emergency radio system must be brought forward from the current timescale of twenty years to two years, the report said. It was unacceptable that eighteen years after the King’s Cross fire that emergency services were still unable to communicate underground.
"Since [the King’s Cross fire], there has been a failure by successive governments to take the necessary action to install underground communications for the transport and emergency services," said the report.
"There can be no excuse for failing now to deliver facilities to enable underground radio communications by the end of 2007, which was the target date given to us by the emergency services in November 2005."
Communications problems were particularly prevalent at the King’s Cross/Russell Square site, the deepest place where a bomb had been set off, with the emergency services taking the longest amount of time to declare a major incident.
London Underground’s own Emergency Response Unit was hampered, once again, by communication difficulties. "It is a cause for concern that they do not have radios that function underground," said the report.
The London Ambulance Service, along with the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade, must now report to the London Assembly every six months until May 2007 on progress towards this goal. An emergency digital radio system also needs to be put in place by Transport for London as an interim solution, added the report.
As well as communication issues, the report also asked for action on providing advice on construction of internet-based support groups for survivors and families – the King’s Cross United group was created solely by the survivors themselves, with no outside assistance.
The London Ambulance Service responded in a statement: "We have acknowledged we faced difficulties with communications that day, but this did not prevent us treating and transporting more than 400 patients to hospital from all the sites within three hours; this is a testament to the way everyone involved handled what was a tremendously challenging situation."
The service’s response to Richard Barnes, head of the committee writing the report, described the issues medical staff were having with communications. "There was no technical failure in the mobile phone network but that it was simply a capacity issue as more and more of the public made calls and simply swamped the networks."
It was also noted by the London Assembly that the Casualty Bureau’s information line was an 0870 number, which charges for calls at national rate, is not usually included in free minutes on mobile phones or landlines, and sometimes generates revenue for the holder of the line.
However, the revenue generated by this number had subsequently been donated to charity. The report recommends future hotlines should use a freephone number.
Future training exercises should also include "the media as participants rather than simply as observers."
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