General

Were you caught up in the evacuation? Let us know your experiences ...

Chris
I came out of an interview for the Automotive Design course at the university. I couldn't understand where everyone had gone when i eventually surfaced from the Maurice Foss building on campus.

Dave
Emma, many thanks for the sweeping statement about Coventry and everybody who lives here. I would not dream of tagging your narrow mindedness to everybody who happens to live near you.

John McGowan
I was in the Coventry & Warwickshire radio centre when we found out.Later on, i was going to go to the Karaoke at The Old Windmill Pub in Spon Street at about 7.30pm. I walked round the centre of the city for about an hour and a half untill i came to Spon Street, and guess what it was shut by the Police because of the "BOMB".

faye
people from coventry arnt pathetic i think some of the police were rude for example i went to walk over the little footbridge near my house and a female police officer approched me and said"er,wher do u think your going,i told her and she said,iv allready seen your face your gonna have to walk round,it would a takin me 2 minuits 2 get to my house and instead it took half an hour to walk, also my little sisters mum had to park 20minz away from my house with my two little sisters after being stuck in the traffic for an hour.

George
I think the Police etc. did a brilliant job getting everybody out of the city and to safe places outside the exclusion zone. Thank you.

James
Being a student trying to get home on the bus was a nightmare, horrible traffic around the ring road.

Emma
Its amazing how pathetic people from coventry are. You moan about being evacuated from a potentially life threatening situation....and after reading the list of observations and complaints below I see no one has said thank you to all the services involved.Would you all have been moaning like you have if the bomb had gone off and killed someone???No wonder the council doesn't listen to you, you really have no clue at all.

joe fiasco
when i heard the bang i thought it was my wife !!

Carla
How can parents be 'disgusted' when their children were led away for safety reasons. Get real 'Miss Eales' - would you rather your child was left at school because they couldn't get hold of you? How ridiculous.

Steve
Ken - 50kg of unstable explosive, a gas main and a fuel tank - this warrants a 500m exclusion zone.What could have happened isn't worth thinking about.Several thousand are slightly inconvieninced whilst the bomb is dealt with in a professional maner.

Terry
The bomb may have been sitting idle for years but it was only that afternoon that it was repeatedly hit with a huge digger before thay realised what it was. That could have made it unstable and so quite rightly every precaution taken. Plus it is near the Radford gas works and under a huge industrial crane that is ran on petrol. Better safe than sorry i think.

ken
strange that what was a rather small bomb dangerous only perhaps to a few tens of yards suddenly became what looked like an anti terrorism exercise,did emergency services and others latch on to this as an ideal opportunity to test themselves without the complaints that usually follow such events

Stuart
Was coming from warwick uni back into coventry and i couldnt get to anyones accomodation. We were stuck in traffic for over 2 hours. We managed to get thru to my girlfriends but looking on a map i noticed we were only 700m away from it! Didnt stay there and had to drive an extra 15 miles out and around to go to my house. All in all took nearly 5 hours to do a 10 minute journey!

Navid
very scary, i herad the bomb go off last night at roughly 2.30am. i hope knowone was hurt and that it was a controled explosion, however. it was so loud, i could hear the bits falling to the ground seconds after the bang, i can only imagine what it must have been like to be alive during ww2, horrible, hope a ww3 never happens....

ron henshaw
what,s better, a little hasle for a short while, or hundreds dead forever , think about it ?

TIM
What! living by the canal basin i had no idea, untill an email this morning

parent
disgusted that kids get sent home from school but unable to actually GET home!!!

Mandy
Wow that is scary, but even more scary is how many times have i bin sitting on a bomb. I can't belive it!!!

City Centre Worker
Ok, so yesterday was a tad inconvenient for some people. I think it would have been even more inconvenient if the bomb had exploded. My store was evacuated at 1.50pm so there was a lot of waiting around but I can understand why the precautions were taken. I think we need to think about the people whose job it was to dissarm the bomb - they put their lives at risk to potentially save our lives.

Sarah
Some friends and I went into coventry to do some shopping on our free afternoon and all we got were closed shops, fire alarms and evacuations. waste of a £2.60 bus fare, but what can you do? got told by a nice shop assisstant that it was a bomb scare, but found out later it was a WWII bomb... after 65 years of not exploding I guess anything could have happened this afternoon and we were lucky the whole city centre was shut down just in case.

Elaine
From California...hope it is a dud and all goes well.I'm a Coventry girl and my family is there!

Karl Mann
I work in lower precinct in the city centre. I could hear something going on over the CVOne retail radio network but wasn't sure what. Eventually we we're told what had happened and at 2:45 lower precinct was evacuated, leaving all staff from the store I work out without any keys, money, phones etc. and some even had no way of getting home!

Jen
I work for the council, we were evacuated about 3 o'clock, but as i live on middleborough road i had no way of finding a way back, walked all the way up through earlsdon and all the way around and found the road closed off! Better safe than sorry but it's been a very long day!

Elaniel
I actually work at the Plaza, still not sure unfortunately if we will be back in first hting in the morning, they are apparently holding off until the morning before they set it off in a controlled state. Was pretty scary stuff. Apparently by morning they would have pulled the blockades back to 200 metres instead of the 500 it was at today.

Kate
With regards to evacuating children from school without letting parents know first-it is important to make sure that everybody is safe so I reckon that a right decision has been made in that matter,you wouldn't expect them to let you know about evacuation in a case fire or an earthquake but keep your child away from the danger.

Irene Shannon
My son lives in The Waterside Flats at the Canal Basin - on the opposite side of the Ring Road to the Post Office sorting Offices. Nearer than nauls Mill house to the Plaza site.They were and are forgotten in the evacuation, as usual the Canal Basin Car Park is a forgotten area by the Police.Will they warn/inform all the residents that they are planning to explode the thing some time during the night. All beit controlled it still could be a suprise if they haven't been listening to the radio

Heather
I am disgusted that there was so little communication.My son lives in Lower Holyhead Road they were evacuated by the police with no idea where they should go if the incident continued into the night

Aaron
our house on barras lane is closed and on the edge of the outer corden there have been times that we haven't been able to get into the house!!

kelly
are we still able to go to uni tomorrow?

lucky jane
i was there at xmas in the balgrade watching a panto cant believe how close to bomb i was!!was stuck in traffic due to the evactuation police everywhere telling you to go in different directions and away from bomb area.think its really very good how everyone stuck together and helped eachother out blitz spirit

caroline
im from birmingham and decided today of all days to go shopping in coventry, was told at 2.45 while on my way back to my car we had to evacuate,i had to make arrangements for my son to be collected from school and had to get a bus home - which was a nightmare journey, leaving my car behind not knowing when i can go and get it.

lily
i was stuck in the massive traffic que, this was a total over reaction to something that has been sitting there since the war?!?!

Kylie
I work in Specsavers and had to stand outside for 2 hours whilst we were evacuated! It was just abit cold but lots of people seemed confused as to what was going and were more anoyed that they couldnt' get into the store or the city centre! Everywhere was closed and you couldn't really get in or out of the centre for a few hours!

Adela - yr7
I go to barrs hill. WE got told to get our stuff and go home because there was a bomb in town, i live near town and i couldnt get home. WE left skwl at 2.30ish and i got home at 6ish bcause every road was blocked and the police wouldnt let us through.! bac to skwl tomorow? i fink so

Ashley light
I work at the ice rink in the city centre and we were told to get everyone out as soon as possible then to leave the building and lock up. We were not told when we will be aloud back though!

Manda
Does anybody know if it has been cleared yet? My house was blocked off and i want to go home but don't know whether there is any point yet!?

Becky
I work in a nursery near the Canal Basin and had to evacuate later this afternoon, and struggled in parents collecting there children due to all the routes being blocked off towards the nursery.

Aman
town was really paked out, everything was all over the place especially at pool meadow

paul
STOP moaning will you people,all you can do is think about me me me.What would you say if it did explode killing people. The services are doing the best to protect you lot from being hurt.

fabz
i woz in scool n my scool iz near da city centre so we left scool early

Batool
I'm a student at sidney stringer whe i hear about this i was terrified because first it was the sidney stringer fire and now this well thank god you got the bomb i meant its been around since ages i am suprised it did not explode what i am worrid about will i be going to school tommorow? thank you.

Milly Anderson
I work at TJ Hughes so we could see everything that was going on. I finished at 1pm and eventually the shop was evacuated at 3pm. The whole experience was quite frightening.

Laura
works at primark got evacuated at half 3 was mad that we got evacuated even tho we are not that close.

The Looker
RE to, P A Gallagher.A little over reaction? This is a 3000lb Barrel Mine, just because it hasn't gone off before, it does not mean it won't. These types of bombs were designed to drive deep into the earth, then exploding. Creating a shockwave through the ground, and making surrounding buildings to crumble to the earth. My sources have told me, that the reason why it is taking so long to dissarm is because, the original bomb experts that were called in, did not have enough experience to deal with an explosive like that. So because of that, they had to call in more experienced experts to deal with the situation.I have also been informed, the experts may not be able to generate a controlled explosion/dissarm it. This means that they would have to set it off.

catherine
I I'm a student living in Radford Road, 5 mins away from where this is happening, all routes into the centre are blocked, there are police everywhere and we've seen a few ambulances too. We have no idea how long this is going to be going on and whether we can get into Uni tomorrow

miss eales
disgusted that parents were not informed that there children where being evacuated from st` osburgs school and moved to bablake school and only realised something was going on when i saw my son and nieces walking down the road parents should of been informed straight away that there was a bomb so nearby to there school.

chelsea
i got evacuated from school i am at barrs hill and we just got told to get everything and get out of school and go home we wondered what was going on

P A Gallagher
A little over reaction. How long has the bomb been there without a problem?

ccfc87
my girlfriend works in cathedral lanes and cannot close her shop up because of the cordon. cathedral lanes is far away from the bomb site and what has happened is ludacris

Jenny
Got to go home early - thankfully my car - usually in Belgrade Plaza car park -was in for service!