Was anyone else caught up in the closure of King's Cross underground station this morning?
Having trudged through packed tunnels and squeezed onto a creaking tube train, I had hoped that the worst of the journey this morning was done - but when my train got to K's X, there was a blaring alarm, and an ear-piercing announcement:
"ATTENTION. BECAUSE OF A REPORTED EMERGENCY, PLEASE LEAVE THE STATION IMMEDIATELY."
Gosh, one thought - the dark days of 7/7 all over again. But then I looked at my fellow passengers. A mild irritation was all that seemed to be felt. People were most reluctant to get off the train. People were still trying to get on to the train. People were still milling around on the platform. The only people getting excited were those having rows with the staff about the disruption to the service. In sum, people couldn't give two figs for this alert.
That's the spirit of the Blitz, I thought. That's what won this country the war. That's why there will always be an England. And did those feet, in ancient time...
But no. When I listened to what people were saying to the staff at K's X, I swiftly realised why the mood was so sanguine. It was because this happens all the time. I personally didn't say a word to the beleaguered staff in the packed tunnels - having been tasked with clearing one of Europe's busiest stations tout de suite, they were simply doing so - and the hysteria with which many of them were doing it was symptomatic of an organisation near meltdown in any case, so little sense could be gained from conversation. But what one eventually gathered, as we were obediently herded outside to stand in the rain (or, as I did, walk to one's destination) was that the cause of this klaxon-blaring, panic stations, all hands on deck emergency was...
overcrowding.
Now, take a look at the wording of the alert above.
There will have been plenty of people on that train who, like me, thought that this was a (probably unnecessary, but you can't be too careful, dear) terror alert. It wasn't.
Actually, as I tried to change to the Victoria line before the station was evacuated in the manner of an immediate red alert, it was near-empty. So the alert, for large bits of the station, actually wasn't necessary. But for the sake of argument, let's say that it WAS necessary. Don't you think that there should be some kind of delineation between warnings available to those in charge of stations, so that public confidence in the top level alert isn't used up..?
Because of these constant system crashes, people now ignore the alerts. If and when the balloon finally goes up and there is a for-real alert, people won't believe it. They will continue to argue with staff and to try to stay on platforms and to get on trains, and then they will get blown up. They will do so because they are effectively being trained to ignore and detest the alerts that should be used sparingly for their safety. In effect, the incompetence in our capital's transport system is aiding terror.