A PARAMEDIC who was one of the first on the scene in 1993 said it was ‘one of those days from hell’.

Ian Moses was aged 23 and working as a leading ambulance paramedic in charge at the station in Widnes when the call came there had been an explosion on Bridge Street.

With terrorism the last thing on his mind, he headed to Warrington and found the town centre deserted on what should have been a busy Saturday.

He said: “It was almost surreal and then I spotted people lying on the floor.

“I helped a guy who appeared to have two fractured legs lying between the alleyway of Boots and Hancock and Wood and then I saw Tim Parry.

“I helped him breathe and got him into one of the ambulances and it was only as we were doing that our manager said we had to get out of here because there could be further explosions.

“That was the first we had heard it was a bomb.”

The 43-year-old had been a paramedic for nine months before the incident and had to go straight from taking Tim to Warrington Hospital to another major incident in Orford.

He added: “We went from such an unprecedented attack to a call where a two-year-old baby had fell into a hot bath and been badly scolded.

“It was another life-threatening case and on TV you think things like that happen all the time but really we only get calls like that once a month.

“To get two in a day was really stressful and we took the baby to Alder Hey but by the time we got back to Warrington everyone had been dealt with.”

The father-of-two visited Tim’s parents when they were at Walton Hospital and said it is an incident he often thinks of whenever he goes past the Peace Centre.

He added: “You don’t consider the effects of it because you have to concentrate on the patient, it’s only at the end of the shift when you go home and have uniforms to wash that it starts to become more real.

“There was a team of us that day and through the ambulance services interventions we were able to do something to keep Tim alive and give his parents the opportunity to be with him.

“We may not have been able to save his life but we did the next best thing and there was plenty of other people involved treating other patients.”