LONDON BOMBING UPDATE:

Flawed emergency planning and communications breakdowns, including jammed cell phone networks and radio failures, hampered rescuers’ response to London’s deadly transit bombings last year, an inquiry said Monday.

The official report highlighted confusion in response to the July 7 bombings after cellular networks became overloaded and radio communications from street level to rescue workers in the subway failed. The attacks killed 52 commuters and four bombers, and injured about 700 people.

Some hospitals had to rely on staff running to and from bomb sites to gather information, according to the 700-page report, published by the London Assembly’s July 7 review committee, one of several inquiries into the attacks.

Hardened and interoperable communications systems — as we learned on 9/11, in the NYC blackout, during Katrina, and in London — are both very important to disaster response and not really extant in many places.