London Bridge: Frightened passenger caught up station chaos recalls 'wall of people' on escalator

It was the moment rush hour became crush hour, as Simon Harris reports

A passenger trapped on an escalator at London Bridge on Wednesday night recalled seeing a 'wall of people' at the station.

Vanessa Edwards was one of hundreds of furious commuters crammed into the station as a trespasser on the track brought services grinding to a halt.

She described how people were frightened and started shouting "move, move!".

"Once I got onto the escalator I was quite relieved and I thought I was going to get onto my train," Vanessa told ITV News London.

"But as I got to the top I realised there wasn't any space for people to get off. I got two metres from the end and there was a wall of bodies.

"I could see the feet just by my head trying to scrabble as the escalator was moving and they couldn't do anything.

"I started running backwards to try and avoid falling down.

"So I hit the emergency button," she explained.

Vanessa said the rush hour horror left her feeling scared and her legs kept shaking with fright.

"We were so close to having a really nasty accident," she said.

"I am not qualified to say where it went wrong but I do think perhaps there was a situation where it could have escalated very quickly.

"I commute up from Tonbridge about three times a week and I've been using London Bridge for years and I've never seen anything like that," she added.

Some furious passengers claimed the situation was made worse by a new timetable brought in on Southeastern last month.

The pandemonium prompted a safety review by rail bosses who apologised for the problems.

"There were delays across a large part of London following a welfare incident where a person was on the track ad we had to sop the movement of trains for around 45 minutes," said Scott Brightwell from Southeastern trains.

"That cause widespread disruption across the London region.

"Passengers were held to make sure platforms did not become overcrowded, he added"

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