A SURVIVOR of the 7/7 attacks attacked restrictive safety rules which prevented rescuers from reaching dying victims sooner.
Michael Henning said some victims suffered agonising deaths lasting up to 40 minutes without any pain relief because of emergency service “protocols” on entering dangerous situations.
He recalled his anger at seeing three separate groups of firefighters waiting around after he was evacuated from the train blown up by Shehzad Tanweer at Aldgate Tube station on July 7, 2005.
The commuter told each of them: “Why aren’t you down there? There are people dying.”
He said the firefighters were too embarrassed to look at him or reply, apart from a young man who said they were worried about a secondary explosion.
Giving evidence to the inquests into the deaths of the 52 victims of the attacks, Mr Henning paid tribute to individual rescuers but criticised the rules that stopped them from acting more quickly.
“There were people that may have survived if they had got urgent medical response there and then,” he said.
“My view is even if those who were too severely wounded to ever survive, some of them died in agony for 20, 30, 40 minutes, and at least they should have had the dignity of having some morphine or something of that nature.”
Mr Henning, who in 2005 was working as a broker and living in Kensington, west London, added: “In emergency situations, there’s a reason why there’s blue lights and sirens on emergency vehicles, and I know how critical it is.
“I’ve even spoken to a doctor who said that with immediate medical response perhaps 10% of people would have survived.”
Mr Henning also told the inquests at the Royal Courts of Justice how he vividly relived the moment when the suicide bomber detonated his device on the eastbound Circle Line train.
He said: “It feels completely real to me now as I speak.
“I can feel the right hand side of my face because I was standing right on to the explosion. I can feel it tense up now, I can feel heat. It’s extremely real.
“One moment you had the sense of reality as you know it, your everyday Tube travel. And the next, it’s all changed.” Mr Henning said he thought he was dead until he felt blood on the right side of his face, where he was hit by flying glass.
He then heard screams from seriously injured people in the bombed carriage and saw a shocking sight when he peered in to see if he could help.
