Brave Heart

underground rescue

tube driver jeff porter responded to london’s july 7 terror attacks with quick thinking and classic british reserve

Jeff Porter was mulling over what sandwich to have on his breakfast break when he slowed at the signal before Edgware Road station and watched an approaching Circle line train on the adjacent track. As it drew level, Porter, a London Underground driver for 15 years, was startled to see a strange, bright yellow light inside the second carriage. “As I passed the carriage, my windscreen shattered,” says Porter, 46. “The strangest part is that I never heard anything—no bang.” Then he saw debris piled high on the tracks before him. “My first thought was, Have I done anything to cause this?” he recalls. “Then, What do I do now? It was a lonely couple of seconds.”

Nothing had prepared Porter for the detonation of the suicide bomb in the train beside him, an explosion that left seven dead and would have killed him and many on his own train had it happened two seconds later. Fifty-six people died in the four bomb attacks on three tubes and a bus that late rush-hour morning on July 7. If not for Porter’s quick wits and courage, and that of many other Londoners, the death toll could have been a lot higher.

In the confusion after the explosion, Porter knew that he had to make sure his 1,000-odd passengers got out safely. As he entered the first carriage behind the driver’s booth, he heard a voice crying, “Help me. Help me, please.” (He later learned that the explosion had thrown a passenger under his train.) Porter left the train and ran through the smoke- and dust-filled tunnel to the station to organize help. When he returned, he saw the cratered, shattered carriage of the Circle line train—and learned that people were dying. Porter now turned his attention to his “very worried” passengers: “I kept telling everyone, You’ll soon be out. Don’t panic. Sit down. Read your paper.” Over the next hour, Porter helped move people in small groups through the carriages and along the tracks in what turned out to be an extraordinarily calm and orderly evacuation.

Porter’s tells his story matter-of-factly, but the way he fiddles with his hands betrays the tension. A native Londoner, he’s working on his master’s degree in contemporary history and politics but intends to return to driving, despite his nerves. “I have spent all my life in London,” he says, “and the Underground is part of life.” —By Helen Gibson

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