DELAYS in sending ambulances to help the victims of the 7/7 bus bombing were "totally unacceptable", the inquest into the London terror attacks has heard.
The first paramedic crew arrived just minutes after suicide bomber Hasib Hussain, 18, blew himself up in Tavistock Square and killed 13 people.
But records show it was nearly an hour after the explosion when more ambulances were dispatched to treat horrifically-wounded survivors.
London Ambulance Service received detailed calls about the incident within minutes of the blast.
However, senior managers controlling the operation did not have access to this information in their command room and further ambulances were only sent to Tavistock Square at 10.42am, the inquest was told.
Christopher Coltart, barrister for some of the bereaved families, questioned ambulance operations manager Paul Gibson about the hold-up.
He asked: "Are you prepared to accept that the failure of central ambulance control to dispatch any ambulances to the scene for half an hour after it was made aware of the position was totally unacceptable?"
Mr Gibson replied: "I can't explain the decisions that ambulance control made because I wasn't there at the time."
A log shows that a St John Ambulance crew arrived at Tavistock Square at 10.37am, before the next LAS ambulance got there at 10.46am.
The inquest heard there were a series of other problems with the LAS response to the bus bombing.
A member of the public called LAS at 9.48am and said a bus had been blown up outside the British Medical Association, adding there were "lots of people screaming".
Three minutes later a Metropolitan Police officer rang ambulance control and said ten people had been injured in the blast.
But the LAS command team had gone into a special "gold suite" used for major incidents, which at the time did not give them access to the system recording these messages.
The inquest at London's High Court into the 52 deaths in 2005 continues.
