Lord Blunkett in 'terrifying' Tube station fall on way to Sheffield Wednesday match
David Blunkett has described the ‘terrifying’ moment he fell into the gap at a Tube station on the way to a Sheffield Wednesday match.
The former Sheffield MP recalled how his legs slipped into the gap between the platform and the London Underground train carriage at Westminster.
The 77-year Labour peer, who is blind and has a guide dog called Barley, had been travelling to watch his beloved Owls play Brentford in the Carabao Cup on October 29.
He was so badly injured that he ended up in A&E and has required specialist follow-up treatment in Sheffield.
Writing for the Sun on Sunday, Lord Blunkett called it a ‘terrifying moment’ which he will ‘never forget’ and said he still suffers ‘flashbacks’.
He told how as he followed Barley on board he ‘suddenly felt both my feet disappearing down the gap’.
‘Excruciating pain’
He ended up face down on the floor, with his legs having ‘somehow been scraped out of the gap and into the carriage’.
He described feeling ‘excruciating pain’ in both legs, which were bruised and grazed but thankfully not broken.
Lord Blunkett, who recently had a heart attack, believes he must have lost his footing as the gap between the train and platform was so large. He thinks he was then swept onto the carriage by the rush hour crowd behind him.
Platforms like ‘death traps’
He told how he is ‘angry’ about what hapened to him and believes more needs to be done to improve safety on the London Underground, where he said some of the platforms are like ‘death traps’.
“Whenever you step into a tube station in London you hear the tannoy warn people to ‘mind the gap’,” he wrote. “But too often there are no staff members to actually help you if - like me - cannot see.”
On the day of his accident, he said the staff member who should have been attending the platform had been called away due to an attack.
Lord Blunkett said he is due to meet Transport for London, which operates the London Underground network, and would demand answers and an ‘urgent review’ into the safety of the capital’s busiest Tube stations.
“It is not good enough to simply say ‘mind the gap’ and not give any help,” he added. “We need action now to avoid preventable injury or worse.”
London Underground has said it is working to ‘ensure that lessons are learned’ and is undertaking a ‘huge range of work aimed at eradicating such incidents and making travelling even safer for everyone’.