London – On the eerily deserted street where a terrorist bomb shredded a double-decker bus, there’s a silent but frantic cry for help.
Homemade posters hastily taped to phone booths and bus shelters plead for information about Londoners who haven’t been heard from since Thursday’s attacks. Friends and relatives know it’s a race against time, and hopes faded Saturday as the hours ticked by.
“I just have to find him,” said a tearful Yvonne Nash, who went on television with photos of her fiancé, Jamie Gordon, who may have been on the bus where 13 people were killed.
“I have to know what happened,” she said. “Is he dead? Is he alive? Not knowing is dreadful.”
Scotland Yard has declined to issue a list of the missing, but police said Saturday they were looking into more than 1,000 missing-person reports. That suggested the death toll could rise, although authorities have said they doubt the toll will surpass 100 and they expect to resolve most of the cases.
But it could take time: Police said Saturday that they had yet to identify any bodies because most of them were blown apart by the powerful explosions.
Officials said they were opening a 24-hour reception center to provide information, advice and counseling to relatives of the missing.
More than 105,000 calls have been logged to a hotline set up by the police Casualty Bureau, where officials are checking names against a database containing those provided by hospitals, morgues and funeral homes, Sgt. Dave Storer said.
David Webb, 38, stood in the mist Saturday outside the King’s Cross Underground station, not far from where crews were working to retrieve bodies and clues from the wreckage of a subway train where at least 21 people died.
Webb, a teacher, clutched a framed photograph of his 29- year-old sister, Laura, who took the Tube to work Thursday morning and never showed up.
“We don’t know where she is,” he said. “This is a very upsetting and very traumatic time for us, but we have to remain confident that we’ll hear from her soon.”
Some people, unwilling to believe the worst, stoically held out hope that their loved ones had fainted, suffered memory loss and lost their cellphones, ending up in a hospital with no way to easily call home.
