Looking back on the London terrorist bombings of one year ago, Howard County resident Lisa Broten says she can?t believe how close she came to death or serious injury.
Broten?s flight to London?s Heathrow Airport touched down 10 minutes after three bombs exploded in the London subway on July 7, 2005, but before a fourth tore apart a double-decker bus, she said.
“What if our flight had gotten in early or we had taken a double-decker bus?” Broten asked rhetorically. “It was really that close.”
Broten, an assistant state?s attorney in Howard County, recalled on Friday ? one year later ? the terror that grippedLondon in the moments after the terrorist attacks.
“We were outside the Tube [subway] station and the lines were just ridiculous,” she said. “There was no way to get any place. The roads were packed. You could see that people were freaking out.”
Broten and her husband, Neil, were eventually able to hail a taxi to take them to their London hotel on the day when 52 people were killed in the terrorist attacks.
“Once we were in the cab driving into the city, we could hear, ?Another bomb has gone off! Another bomb has gone off!? ” Broten recalls. “Then I started to freak out, with Sept. 11 … I thought, ?It?s happening all over again.? ”
Much of the city of London was closed July 7, but as public transportation began to reopen the next day, the Brotens were intent upon riding the Tube.
Lisa Broten said she and her husband wanted to show their solidarity with the people of England.
“We were determined to get on the Tube and go around the city,” she said. “We wanted to show the terrorists that they won?t win and we?re not going to stop our lives.”
