Bomb survivor’s tale has surreal twist of fate

Neans McSweeney, South East Correspondent

Londoner Liza Pulman captured scenes from inside the train on her camera phone and her husband, David Ganly, who is originally from Dublin, downloaded the images and emailed them to ITV and Channel 4.

David was in rehearsals yesterday ahead of the rescheduled opening of The Arab-Israeli Cook Book, which was supposed to have begun on Thursday.

It was a surreal day for the couple but the reality of what had happened and how lucky Liza was to survive only began to sink in for her yesterday as she watched television reports.

She said: “I watched back the footage and they described me as a bomb survivor. It was only really then that the penny dropped. An uncanny calm came over me. We didn’t really know what had happened. I took about 30 seconds of footage on my phone and when I came home, David downloaded it for me and sent it off to the TV channels via email.

“Even watching the footage was uncanny. I can’t quite believe that I was there. That I survived it. It was very difficult to breathe and our eyes were stinging. Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk past the carriage that was blown apart. While there was a certain element of chaos, everyone was calm and very well behaved. Things like this are a great leveller... It really was a life-changing experience.”

David Ganly’s father, Patrick, said the content of his son’s play was a strange twist of fate. “The story behind the show has an uncanny resemblance with what happened. It focuses on a suicide bomber who goes in a bus,” said Mr Ganly, who lives in Stonyford, Co Kilkenny.

“When I heard of the bomb on the radio, I switched on the television. I saw the footage taken with a camera phone and thought to myself how cool and calm the person filming it was. It wasn’t until I spoke to David that I realised it was Liza’s footage. Lisa is also an actor but was beginning a part-time job. I knew she’d be on the train at that time. She had been in touch with him so we knew she was fine. But she was stranded in London in her dusty clothes for hours because the transport system just ground to a halt.”