The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Blasts send Bangaloreans scurrying home

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Saturday, Jul 26, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Blasts send Bangaloreans scurrying home

Karnataka Bureau

— Photos: K. Murali Kumar

SAFE: Schoolchildren returning home early on Friday following the serial blast in Bangalore and at right curious passengers near a blast site.

BANGALORE: Bangaloreans hit the panic button as news — and rumours — of the serial blasts reached them. Even as schools made arrangements to send the children safely back to their homes, several workplaces downed their shutters and let their anxious employees go home early.

The surge of frantic calls jammed cellphone networks and thousands of commuters jammed all the arterial roads. The roads in central and southern parts of the city witnessed traffic snarls. Later, after the evening rush hour, roads wore a relatively deserted look.

Meanwhile, rumours did the rounds about blasts in many more places. A multiplex on Vivekananda Road in Ulsoor cancelled all its shows for the day.

Fear gripped residents as they watched the sequence of events unfold on their television sets.

With thousands of people trying to contact their friends and relatives to make sure they were okay, much of the telecom network failed for several hours, only adding to the panic.

With the police barricading the stretches where the explosives went off and people rushing back home, traffic was thrown out of gear on almost all arterial roads.

The traffic jam was particularly acute near Madiwala, where shocked crowds gathered around the body of Sudha Ravi, who died in the blast. The Bangalore-Mysore road was severely hit too.

A few IT/BT companies shut shop by afternoon. Security services searched the office buildings with the help of police officials.

Even as a few companies such as Infosys arranged extra buses to ensure employees got home, techies in several IT majors were left stranded with no transport.

Several of them waited for their cabs till late in the evening only to be told later they would have to fend for themselves. In some companies, cab services resumed after 8 p.m.

Employees were unofficially informed that all roads were blocked and also that the companies did not want to take any risk. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which had witnessed a terror attack a few years ago, had several of its laboratories evacuated. Delegates attending an international exhibition at the JN Tata auditorium nearby were also taken away to a “safe” place.

The police cordoned off the institute and searched the campus for any suspicious material or objects. The police will continue to monitor the situation, they added. As calls poured in from anxious parents enquiring about their children, schools made arrangements to send their students home.

“Initially we weren’t clear about what had happened. Parents started calling us around 2 p.m., and once we confirmed the news, we started making arrangements to send the students in school buses. However, by this time several parents staying nearby started coming to the school to fetch their children,” said Asha Ravishankar, teacher of Presidency School in Nandini Layout.

An employee of Bishop Cotton Boys’ High School said that within minutes of the blasts parents had started crowding outside the school. Bethany High School in Koramangala being near the blast site, was a picture of chaos, said a teacher.

“Panic calls from worried parents started coming in by which time we had already started sending the students in school buses,” the teacher added.

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