Londoners Calm in Aftermath of Bombing

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ALEX CHADWICK, host:

And an American in London now. The deputy editor of our partner magazine slate.com, David Plotz, was in London today. He's been walking around the city, talking to Londoners. He joins us now by cell phone from London.

David, how does the city seem? You were close, I guess, to this bomb attack on the bus?

DAVID PLOTZ reporting:

I was close to the bus explosion and also to one of the Tube explosions which was right at the same spot. And I got there about an hour after the explosion. London seemed surprisingly `go about your business.' I was in Washington for the 9/11 attacks, and there the city just cleared out instantly and people were in a panic. Here, people were very much sort of just going ahead. And the city did start to clear out by early afternoon as people realized there was no Tube service and no bus service, so they had to walk home. So there's sort of this walking exodus out of the city.

CHADWICK: The people that you spoke to--how did they seem? Are they calm? Distressed by this terrorism, I would think.

PLOTZ: My sense was that people are very calm. I mean, there was a lot of--it was much more a sense of kind of inconvenience about it. And obviously, I didn't speak to anyone who was a victim or family of victim for whom this is clearly going to be something much worse. But for regular Londoners, I think there is a feeling they already knew the enemy, unlike with the American September 11 attacks where we didn't know what had happened. I think there's a sense that, oh, they already knew who did this. They already knew the purpose of it. And mostly it was a sense of inconvenience.

CHADWICK: You are there, I guess, talking about your new book--you were about to go to the BBC. But you also were in Trafalgar Square yesterday when the announcement came down that the city's going to get the 2012 Olympics. What a bizarre...

PLOTZ: It's really striking when you walk by the news kiosks--all the newspapers have these incredible, you know, `London celebrates,' `London's great win,' you know, special Olympic edition of all the newspapers. And then at that very moment, the whole city is sort of, you know, walking out of the center of London because there's been this terrible bomb attack. I mean, there's this one form of pandemonium yesterday.

Oddly, the city felt more kind of crazed yesterday when there's this Olympic celebration than it does today. Today, there's sort of a kind of much more sort of quiet stoicism. I mean, I was reminded of what people say about London during the Blitz in 1940, that Londoners kind of, you know, kept at it stolidly and did their work and went about their business. And that's much more the sense I have about the city today, that people are quite calm and they're kind of annoyed at what happened and wondering how they're going to, you know, walk 10 miles home. But is isn't this sort of incredible shaking of the sort that took place in Washington and New York four years ago.

CHADWICK: David Plotz, deputy editor of our partners at the online magazine Slate in London. David, thank you.

PLOTZ: Thank you, Alex.

CHADWICK: I'm Alex Chadwick. DAY TO DAY continues in just a moment.

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