I was at the Manchester arena bombing. Did fate bring me to the synagogue?

When Tom Ludley and his firefighter team responded to the terror attack at Heaton Park, they were determined to avoid the mistakes of 2017, writes John Simpson

- John Simpson

Watch manager Tom Ludley of Greater Manchester fire service. Gary Calton/The Observer

(Gary Calton/The Observer)

The attacker struck on the holy Jewish day of atonement. For one firefighter, the day would turn out to be exactly that. "I don't know if it was fate that I was there yesterday, but I'm glad I got the chance to put a lot of things right that I never got the opportunity for before," said Tom Ludley, a watch manager for Greater Manchester fire service.

Ludley had been one of the firefighters held back for more than two hours during the disastrous emergency service response to the Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people in 2017.

On Thursday morning he was leading Green Watch to a suspected fire on a route past Heaton Park synagogue when they came across the Yom Kippur terror attack. "I've got a guy with severe blood loss, not moving, lying on the floor and then, as we become more aware of the scene, there's a male in the yard of the synagogue."