On New Year's Eve, 75-year-old Helen Chown experienced chaos in London, feeling trapped due to poor crowd control. After attending a party, she was unable to return home safely and faced a terrifying situation for five hours among dense crowds. She highlighted flaws in the crowd management strategy, particularly the decision to close Charing Cross station, which angered attendees and worsened the situation. Chown expressed that her experience was frightening, even noting that it was more terrifying than her previous work in a high-security prison.
I thought the planning must have gone wrong. I thought somebody had decided to close Charing Cross station to home-going people and that was a mistake, because it meant there were a lot of angry people who were adding to the crowds, and the crowds were already quite frightening because of their density.
I have rarely been so afraid, or felt so helpless… There was a sort of kettling feeling coming out of the Underground station, because of the density of the crowd.
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