'Screams ... then silence'

Karin Pascoe heaved a sigh of relief as she jumped aboard the departing Underground train from Edgware Rd station.

Then the nightmare began.

A bomb - the third to explode across London - ripped through her train as it left the station, blew a hole in the tunnel and hit another train, killing seven people.

"We had just left the station and there was a big flash of white light and an explosion, one of those massive big sonic boom explosions," said Ms Pascoe, 23, of Nelson.

"There was lots of screaming ... then there was silence."

Trapped underground, she breathed in stinging smoke and suffered bruising in the crash.

The explosion ripped a hole in the bottom of her carriage, which one passenger fell through.

She tried to help one woman.

"When I turned her over, her face was taken off. I saw a limb not attached to a body.

"It's going to take a long time to get those images out of my head."

Eventually she and other survivors were led to the surface by rescuers.

Her story was among several of survival, luck or near-misses from New Zealanders in London for holidays, their OE, work or to visit families.

Another New Zealander caught in the Edgware Rd bombing was Nathan MacAndrew who was celebrating his 25th birthday in London with his sister who lives there.

"Basically all the windows had blown out and there was a big hole in the floor," the Christchurch man told TV3's Campbell Live.

"People were looking through and seeing just bodies lying everywhere, it was pretty gruesome."

Initially, all he could see was thick smoke.



Amid the chaos, he used his cellphone to photograph the destruction.

As they left they made way for passengers from the packed front carriage. Only eight could walk and they were "covered in blood with deep cuts on their faces".

Eventually, the train crew led them back through the tunnel to safety.

Rotorua woman Hilary Preston was also among the survivors at Edgware Rd station.

"Our carriage filled up with flames and I thought, 'Okay, we're on fire'. We were told to stay calm, not to look in the next carriage, but I saw people who were burned.

"People were panicking, people were terrified, they were screaming and smashing windows to get out."

Ms Preston, a former Rotorua Girls' High School student and sales rep living in London for three years, said the attacks would not force her home.

Above ground, 35-year-old New Zealander Cushla Downie, a constable with London's Met police for two years, worked the cordon.

"I saw some people covered in blood, that brought it home," she told the Weekend Herald.

By the time she got home she was shaking.

For an Oamaru couple on their first trip to London, a few seconds may have made all the difference from tragedy.

Arnold and Dorothy McKee, who are in their 60s, had just walked past a double-decker bus in London's Tavistock Square, when it exploded. They were knocked to the ground in the blast and showered in glass.

What appeared to be a person's scalp landed beside Mr McKee on the footpath.