This was the night in Urda after the train accident: rescue and families waiting

It has been a very long night in Urda. And the day will be as well. There are very hard weeks ahead for the injured and their families. The passage from Wednesday to Thursday was marked by the rescue work at the site of the train accident and the uncertainty of the families who are still searching for their loved ones. The emergency teams have continued working among the remains of the trains, illuminated by floodlights, while the authorities advanced in the recovery of the bodies and in the preparations to identify the victims.

The provisional toll remains at 68 dead, according to the information released by the Government of Castilla-La Mancha. At the close of Wednesday, the available data also counted dozens of people hospitalized and others who had been discharged. The authorities did not rule out that the number of fatalities would increase when access to the most damaged carriages could be obtained.

The intervention is taking place under judicial restrictions. The judge in charge of the case has prohibited access by people unrelated to the operation to a perimeter of two kilometers on both sides of the affected stretch. The ruling also prevents removing elements from the area and taking or disseminating images of the site, with the aim of preserving the evidence.

The Judicial Police must also gather information at the Atocha control center on rail traffic in the affected stretch, as well as documentation from Adif relating to the action protocols before, during and after the accident.

The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, had indicated during Wednesday that one of the hypotheses pointed to the authorization for the AVE to resume running while the Iryo train remained stopped on the same track. 

The identification of the victims, one of the priority tasks

The Institute of Legal Medicine of Toledo had received 52 bodies by the close of the day, and two others were at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Ciudad Real. The forensic experts had carried out eight autopsies and the expectation was to begin identifying the deceased this Thursday.

Identification requires comparing the available data and, when necessary, resorting to DNA samples from direct relatives. For this reason, the Civil Guard set up offices in Madrid, Toledo, Córdoba and Sevilla to collect information and facilitate the identification tasks of the people whose whereabouts had not been confirmed.

Until 20:30 on Wednesday, the command posts had registered 29 reports from family members and close contacts of disappearances related to the accident: 13 in Madrid, nine in Toledo and seven in Sevilla. 

Family members waiting for news about their loved ones

The Urda sports center became during Wednesday a point of attention for family members and affected people. Spaces were set up there to receive those seeking information, with water, food, health care and psychological support. Volunteers from Civil Protection and other teams collaborated in the care.

The wait was marked by the lack of information about some people who had been taken to hospitals without their relatives knowing where they were. The initial priority of the health teams was to attend to the injured, including those who had arrived unconscious and had still not been identified.

In the afternoon, a representative of Renfe informed the family members that the pavilion was going to close and that the assistance would be moved to the Civil Guard Command in Toledo. There, separate spaces would be organized for the affected by Renfe and by Iryo, with support staff. The family members would have to formalize the corresponding complaints and provide information that would allow their relatives to be identified.

The railway companies keep specific phone lines enabled for affected people and family members. Renfe has made available 900 10 10 20 and Iryo, 900 001 403. Attention points have also been established at the stations of Madrid-Puerta de Atocha, Sevilla-Santa Justa and Córdoba, as well as Málaga, with attention during the night.

Hospitals are attending to those injured in the accident

The injured were transferred to different health centers, mainly in Castilla-La Mancha. Among them are the University Hospital of Toledo, the Mancha Centro Hospital of Alcázar de San Juan, the General University Hospital of Ciudad Real and the University Hospital of Albacete.

The Emergency doctor at the Hospital of Toledo Miguel Ángel González explained to Cadena SER that the service had received a large number of patients during the morning and that the situation was beginning to normalize at night. The hospital organized teams and care spaces and applied a triage system to distribute the patients according to their severity.

The most serious cases arrived in some cases by medical helicopters. Other injured people were transported in mobile ICUs and required surgical interventions. The health personnel also had the collaboration of professionals who voluntarily joined the device during the emergency.

Three days of official mourning and a high-speed line interrupted

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced three days of official mourning, from October 29 to 31. During that period, the national flag will fly at half-mast on public buildings and on Navy ships. Sánchez conveyed his condolences to the families and stated that the Executive's priority was to attend to the victims and their relatives.

High-speed traffic between Madrid, Ciudad Real and Andalusia continues interrupted by the accident. Adif is maintaining the incident on the affected section and is asking travelers to consult the information from the railway companies. Renfe has enabled special services by conventional rail between Madrid, Ciudad Real and Puertollano, with an approximate increase of one and a half hours in travel time.

The company has also announced an alternative transport plan for travelers who need to travel between Madrid and Andalusia starting Friday, October 30, while the high-speed line remains closed. The schedules, routes and services available should be consulted on the official channels of Renfe and Adif.

This Thursday, the authorities face a new day of work in which they will have to advance the recovery work, identify the victims and provide information to the families. Meanwhile, the judicial investigation into the Urda train accident will try to reconstruct the circumstances that led to the collision of the two trains.