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Trains Still Stuck in London; Interview With Simon Lubin
Aired August 28, 2003 - 14:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Double live shot here of New York and of London. As you can see, screen right, the New York Radio City -- New York getting ready for the MTV Video Music Awards. The lights on, people getting ready to go. Well just the opposite in London, England.
New York felt this pain a couple of weeks ago. Now London experiencing a number of power outages in the capital and parts of southeast England.
Fionnuala Sweeney has been following this story for us out of London. Fionnuala, I understand that certain parts of the power is coming back on now?
FIONNUALA SWEENEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, indeed. But it's still very much underway here. And we understand tens of thousands of people who were on their way home when this power outage happened about an hour and a half ago could be stuck in train stations and the Underground stations all around the city.
Well for more information let's go straightaway to Simon Lubin who is the media relations manager of the British Transport Police. He's on the line.
Simon, can you give us a flavor of what the situation is at the moment?
SIMON LUBIN, BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE: Yes. There's still numbers of training trapped on the London Underground system. Some of those have been evacuated and some are in the process of being evacuated.
The power on the south side of London, which powers the overground trains which will take commuters out to south London and counties like Kent and Sussex and Surrey, which are pretty busy this time of the evening, that has been restored. But the stations are still pretty busy. So it will take a time for them to catch up on the backlog.
But the chief system, the Underground system in London, was hit quite heavily by this power outage, not only in south London but also throughout the city.
SWEENEY: Do we have any idea, Simon, what caused the power outage? LUBIN: No, we don't. Efforts at the moment are on getting people safely home and safely evacuated from underground. And what caused this, it doesn't seem to be railway related. It seems to be something general about the power system centered on south London. What the causes are we'll look at later in slow time, I think.
SWEENEY: Are you aware of any possible casualties there in the underground and in the rail stations?
LUBIN: I haven't seen any reports of causalities yet. Certainly some trains have been stuck for some time, since about quarter past 6:00 this evening. And that will cause some distress amongst passengers. So they will be calling ambulances out just in case.
But I haven't seen any reports of actual casualties other than passengers in general distress because they can get quite warm down there. And, obviously, people aren't very happy to be cooped up in the train for any length of time.
SWEENEY: Are we talking about possibly people being stuck in trains in between stations?
LUBIN: Yes, that's right. So when the power goes, obviously, there are trains stuck in tunnels and there are well-established plans for evacuating people if that's necessary. So someone on the system has to make a decision whether to wait and hopefully get the power back and move the trains on or start evacuating people.
Obviously, once you start evacuating people on to the track, because the power comes from the track, then you have to wait until you've got all the people out before you can turn the power on again. And that has been a problem certainly on the overground trains in south London where some people have been seen on the track and that can cause further delays.
SWEENEY: All right, Simon Lubin of British Transport Police, thanks for joining us on the line there, updating us on the situation at about 5 minutes to 8:00 in the evening, this Thursday night in London. Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Fionnuala, thank you. We'll continue to follow that story out of London.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired August 28, 2003 - 14:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Double live shot here of New York and of London. As you can see, screen right, the New York Radio City -- New York getting ready for the MTV Video Music Awards. The lights on, people getting ready to go. Well just the opposite in London, England.
New York felt this pain a couple of weeks ago. Now London experiencing a number of power outages in the capital and parts of southeast England.
Fionnuala Sweeney has been following this story for us out of London. Fionnuala, I understand that certain parts of the power is coming back on now?
FIONNUALA SWEENEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, indeed. But it's still very much underway here. And we understand tens of thousands of people who were on their way home when this power outage happened about an hour and a half ago could be stuck in train stations and the Underground stations all around the city.
Well for more information let's go straightaway to Simon Lubin who is the media relations manager of the British Transport Police. He's on the line.
Simon, can you give us a flavor of what the situation is at the moment?
SIMON LUBIN, BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE: Yes. There's still numbers of training trapped on the London Underground system. Some of those have been evacuated and some are in the process of being evacuated.
The power on the south side of London, which powers the overground trains which will take commuters out to south London and counties like Kent and Sussex and Surrey, which are pretty busy this time of the evening, that has been restored. But the stations are still pretty busy. So it will take a time for them to catch up on the backlog.
But the chief system, the Underground system in London, was hit quite heavily by this power outage, not only in south London but also throughout the city.
SWEENEY: Do we have any idea, Simon, what caused the power outage? LUBIN: No, we don't. Efforts at the moment are on getting people safely home and safely evacuated from underground. And what caused this, it doesn't seem to be railway related. It seems to be something general about the power system centered on south London. What the causes are we'll look at later in slow time, I think.
SWEENEY: Are you aware of any possible casualties there in the underground and in the rail stations?
LUBIN: I haven't seen any reports of causalities yet. Certainly some trains have been stuck for some time, since about quarter past 6:00 this evening. And that will cause some distress amongst passengers. So they will be calling ambulances out just in case.
But I haven't seen any reports of actual casualties other than passengers in general distress because they can get quite warm down there. And, obviously, people aren't very happy to be cooped up in the train for any length of time.
SWEENEY: Are we talking about possibly people being stuck in trains in between stations?
LUBIN: Yes, that's right. So when the power goes, obviously, there are trains stuck in tunnels and there are well-established plans for evacuating people if that's necessary. So someone on the system has to make a decision whether to wait and hopefully get the power back and move the trains on or start evacuating people.
Obviously, once you start evacuating people on to the track, because the power comes from the track, then you have to wait until you've got all the people out before you can turn the power on again. And that has been a problem certainly on the overground trains in south London where some people have been seen on the track and that can cause further delays.
SWEENEY: All right, Simon Lubin of British Transport Police, thanks for joining us on the line there, updating us on the situation at about 5 minutes to 8:00 in the evening, this Thursday night in London. Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Fionnuala, thank you. We'll continue to follow that story out of London.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
