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A woman who was crushed under a double-deck bus in Oxford Street tonight praises the paramedics who saved her life.
Luella Hanbury took the full weight of the 12-tonne bus on her chest for 25 minutes after being knocked down.
The dramatic rescue will be shown on TV tonight because London's only air ambulance was being filmed in a documentary at the time of the crash.
Ms Hanbury, a 31-year-old jewellery designer, was going to work when she was hit by the bus outside Selfridges.
Her head smashed into the windscreen before she was dragged under and pinned on her back beneath the bus, struggling to breathe.
The air ambulance crew was scrambled and landed in the middle of the Marble Arch roundabout. The crew ran down Oxford Street to get to Ms Hanbury and firefighters used inflatable airbags to push the bus up so doctors could perform life-saving treatment.
She said: "Without these people my story might have been quite different. I do think some kind of miracle happened. I'm not religious but everyone else thought I was maybe dead."
She suffered traumatic asphyxiation, which meant doctors had to put her to sleep on the pavement and control her breathing for her while she was transferred to the Royal London Hospital.
The bus was left balancing on top of her legs, pushing them against her chest in a foetal position as she lay on her back in the accident on 20 March.
Air ambulance paramedic Stephen Gosnell said: "There were a few tons of red bus sitting on top of the lady and they had to be lifted by about one foot to extricate her safely. She is petite. If she had been a big lump like me we could have had a different ending."
Ms Hanbury was left with two fractures in her pelvis, a crushed chest and cut to her head, but she was able to leave hospital after a week.
Mr Gosnell said: "I think her guardian angel was working overtime that day."
Medic One: Life And Death In London, is on BBC1 at 10.35pm.
Reader views (2)
These Double Deck buses are really dangerous think of the number that crash into bridges. Perhaps they are top heavy?
I Know why not make longer buses then the weight would be more evenly distributed and think of all the space for prams and wheelchairs and no stairs to climb.
And because you would not have an under used upper deck you would need less of them thus freeing up roadspace!
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
Buses - more dangerous than lions.
- John, London
