Dozens of Londoners took to Facebook and Twitter to offer shelter to revellers or hotel residents fleeing from the scene of Saturday night’s terror attack, it emerged yesterday.
Householders living close to the scene of the carnage in London Bridge took to social media within minutes to help those left on the streets in the aftermath of the incident, often with little more than a mobile phone.
One pub, the Royal Oak, gave shelter to up to 150 people evacuated from a nearby Premier Inn until around 2.30am – four hours after the attack. This included around 30 children under 10 and one hotel resident evacuated so quickly that he was dressed in nothing more than a pair of boxer shorts.
It also emerged that some taxi drivers provided free rides to people stuck next to the police cordons around London Bridge and Borough Market following the attack.
Ryan Sherman, 24, and his girlfriend, Farah Dib, 28, who live in a three-bedroom flat around half-a-mile from London Bridge, offered to take in people using Facebook’s safety check feature which was introduced in 2011.
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It allows people caught up in disasters or terror attacks to tell family they are safe while allowing those nearby to offer food, shelter, equipment and transport.
Their offer was spotted by a family of four from Toronto, Canada, who were staying close to Borough Market for the night after taking part in a dance tournament in Blackpool the day before.
Myra Saraza-Pacheco, 47, who was with her husband, daughter and her daughter’s dance partner, said they were evacuated from their Airbnb apartment on Borough High Street by police at 10.30pm and fled with just their mobile phones, money and passports.
“The police told us to find a hotel to stay at but none of them wanted to take us in. No one could help,” she told The Times. “We were wandering the streets and just sitting down in the cold with a whole bunch of other lost people wondering what to do.”
She said: “I went on Facebook to tell friends and family we were safe and we suddenly found a few people offering shelter. I messaged a few of them not knowing what would happen and half an hour later we got a message from Ryan saying they had a place. We had nowhere else to go — we were going to have to sleep on the streets.”
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Mrs Saraza-Pacheco, who eventually reached safety at 1.30am, and was due to fly home from Heathrow on Sunday evening, added: “They really are guardian angels. To invite strangers into your home is amazing. So kind.”
Jenalyn, 16, her daughter, said: “We had nowhere to go. We don’t know anyone in London. We are so, so grateful to be given somewhere to sleep like this.”
Ms Dib said: “We’re only a few minutes away from where it was happening. We saw people running away in large groups and it was just natural to do anything we could. None of the hotels in the area were particularly helpful and you can imagine people being trapped in the city, not from London and without family and friends, and that it can incredibly stressful.”
The Twitter hastag #sofaforLondon was also shared hundreds of times following the attack by people offering
George Moss, 22, was taken in by two friends, Holly Robinson and Mary Lynch, who used the hashtag to advertise a bed in their home in nearby Vauxhall.
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He borrowed a phone from a journalist to call his parents after being locked out of his home next to the police cordon when he spotted the couple’s offer.
“I went towards Vauxhall and found Holly and Mary who very kindly gave me a place to stay,” he told the BBC. “I would have been in a pickle; I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Ms Lynch, 23, originally from Nottingham, said: “If I had been in that situation I would want to know that people were going to open up their homes.”
Jade McIntosh, 28, who works at the Royal Oak pub, near Borough underground station, told how she was about to close up the pub at 11pm when people started to stream by fleeing from the attack.
The pub eventually offered accommodation to around 150 people until around 2.30am. This included a large group evacuated from a nearby Premier Inn hotel, including 30 children.
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“We were shutting up when three young men came running in in a panic and screaming for us to lock the doors,” she said. “A while later we saw lots of families and children on the street who had been taken out of a Premier Inn. The kids were in their pyjamas, some didn’t have shoes on and there was even one guy just with his boxer shorts on.”
“We didn’t think twice about letting them in; it just seemed like the natural thing to do because so many people were really distressed. They were sleeping on the sofas, lying on the stairs, everywhere, and we just let them stay as long as they needed to.”