‘Supposed to be a fun night’
“It was carnage. Everyone was scrambling over each other ... It was just a race to get out really,” said 14-yearold Charlotte Fairclough, who got tickets as a Christmas present.
“We just heard a bang. Everyone stopped and turned around,” she said. “You could hear adults telling the little ones it was only a balloon.”
Heidi Hemblys, 43, and her two young daughters followed a line of people out through a fire exit. She saw one man clutching his head, tears streaming down his cheeks, after he had seen bodies dismembered from the blast in the arena’s foyer.
“We heard people say it was a bomb, and so I couldn’t lie to my kids,” she said. “It was supposed to be a fun night. It’s absolutely terrifying.”
More than 240 calls came in for emergency service beginning at 10:33 p.m. Monday, according to Manchester Police. Immediately the police presence in the Victoria train station, which adjoins the concert hall, was immense, said Moir, who rushed to meet her partner on the curb outside. She had to make it through “absolute mayhem” to get there.
“There were people everywhere with cuts, people crying, people trying to call their kids, screaming for their kids,” she said.
Andy Holey, who went to pick up his family, said the blast threw him nine metres through a set of doors.
“When I got up and looked around, there was about 30 people scattered everywhere. Some of them looked dead,” he said.
By 10:46, emergency health services were on the scene, said David Ratcliff, the director of the ambulance services. Many of the victims were taken to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, he said.
The dead were only just beginning to be identified Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, desperate calls went out on social media by family members and friends of those still missing. “Please just somebody get a hold of her. I’m worried sick,” Charlotte Campbell told BBC of her daughter, Olivia, who is 15 and not answering her phone. “We’ve not slept.”
Those whose young children made it safely home said they were thankful, inexpressibly so, but they wondered how they would explain this sort of violence to them. They feared for their innocence.
“You just don’t want to believe it at first,” said Gina Bhaird, 43, who attended the concert with her 14-year-old son, who is autistic. “Noise affects him, and so that’s why we got up to leave the concert slightly early. He’s going to be in bits now.”
Pop star Ariana Grande, 23, was unhurt but described herself as “broken.”
“From the bottom of my heart, I am so, so sorry. I don’t have words,” she said on Twitter.
THERE WERE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE WITH CUTS, PEOPLE CRYING, PEOPLE TRYING TO CALL THEIR KIDS.