On January 4, 2003, the Talgo train which left Madrid at 4.45 p.m. to make its way towards Murcia didn’t arrive. It came off the tracks outside the village of Tobarra, in the Albacete region of Spain, at 7.05 p.m., in less than ten seconds. This is what happened just afterwards. I was very lucky, as you’ll see.

1. Less than 10 seconds
2. Where the fuck are we?
3. A pile of rubble
4. A dark train
5. Meeting Pura and Sali
6. The girl from Nigeria
7. Now what?

Less than 10 seconds

The first time the carriage shudders, it is strong enough to make me stop working on my computer and look up. I lift my head up and look at the others. Everyone is looking at each other, worried. For a moment, the carriage stops shaking, but not for long enough to calm us down.

After about three seconds, more or less, the carriage doesn’t stop shaking. It starts to shake itself free of the tracks. Quickly. Everything gets louder. I can hear crunching metal. All the lights go out. All the windows shatter and people start shouting. What the fuck is happening?

It’s out of control. We are speeding up. The force of it all pushes me back into my seat. What should I do? Try and get into that emergency position they show you on planes or better to sit straight in my seat, seen as it faces backwards and that will be better when we hit something? I sit upright.

The luggage falls off the racks. I can’t see much at all now. There is an awful lot of noise. My computer has flown off into the darkness somewhere. Doesn’t matter. This is scary, and it’s happening right now, to me.

There’s almost not enough time to be frightened. I think about my options. The train starts to come to a stop in great shuddering movements. I can hear the sound of metal grating against stone. That’s it, we’ve stopped. There is a moment of silence.

Then the screaming starts. I feel fear. Have we turned over? Is it about to catch fire? Must look for an exit, right now. The window next to me is still intact; I’m still intact. The door just behind me is closed. The emergency hammer for breaking windows was just above the seat of the bloke next to me. Where is it? Let’s try and find it in the darkness. I can’t see anything. I can’t find the hammer or anything like it.

I try and pull on the emergency alarm but it doesn’t work. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. Must look for an exit right now. I try the door again. Yes! It opens a little and I force the rest. Now where? I can a see a light close by.

Can I get out this way? Carefully, very carefully, I don’t know what’s on the other side of this. I can see the tracks and there’s a big electric cable swinging in the door. Is it live? Be careful. Jump. Out. That’s it, I’m the first one out of the carriage.

Where the fuck are we?

I’m next to the track and the carriage has come off the rails a little but it hasn’t turned over. You can get out this way. I must tell the others who are still inside. I shout back through the door that they can get out this way if the follow my voice.

An old man, who was sat in front of me, climbs out slowly (we’d chatted briefly in Chamartin about which was the best seat: those which face forward or those which face backwards. He’d swapped his with the boy who got on at Atocha because he thought it would be better. I wonder what he thinks now. )

Now what? Must let someone know what has happened “1 –1 – 2 – CALL” (Spanish 9-9-9). Come on, quickly, please. Good: “The Madrid-Murcia train has crashed between Albacete and Murcia.” “Where?” asks the policeman. Not a fucking clue. It’s dark and in the distance I can see the lights of a village. “Which one?” No idea.

I tell the policeman to hang on a second and run off to try and find someone who knows. It’s very important to find this out. I run down the length of the train to get closer to the lights. Along the way, I see some terrible things.

I see lots of people screaming, their faces covered in blood. I see some rubble: is that part of the train?

I see a little girl who’s very upset and a woman next to her crying, her face covered with blood and dust. What has happened? There are others trying to talk on their mobile phones too. I reach the engine and see someone inside: he says he’s the driver. He’s also speaking into his radio.

I come across two blokes in green overalls sitting in a white van. They got here quickly! I ask them where we are. In Tobarra, they tell me, on the old N-301 road.

“Is he sure?” the policeman asks. “Yes,” says the man with the moustache, the green overalls and the white van. “Don’t hang up,” says the policeman, he’s going to hand me over to a doctor. The doctor comes on: “Are there any casualties?” “Yes, lots of them” “What sort of condition are they in?” “Seriously injured, very seriously injured, lots of very seriously injured people here right now.” So the ambulances are on the way.

Now what? The injured, help the injured. I go back to my carriage to see what’s going on there. I climb back in and a boy hands me my computer. I give it to a very scared-looking girl to look after outside for the moment. A woman has broken her leg and is slowly trying to climb down. No serious injuries here then. There are where I’ve just been though. I run back to see what I can do.

The pile of rubble

I go back to the rubble. First, I see two women lying on the ground with their faces covered in blood, screaming. They’re ok, then, more or less. I climb onto the rubble and down the other side. I can see several people mixed into the stones, the bits of iron and what’s left of the train, which isn’t very much at all.

There is a woman wearing glasses, propped up against something, crying and screaming that both her legs are broken and that she feels very cold. I tell her not to worry, the ambulances are on the way: if she’s conscious and screaming she’s alright for now. I give here a jacket which is lying on the floor somewhere so that she doesn’t feel so cold.

I can hear a man shouting behind her, but he’s completely trapped under the rubble. Bang. Bang. Bang. “Get me out of here!” he shouts.

On the ground, next to the woman with the broken legs, I notice something strange: I can’t tell if it’s rubble, luggage or a person. It doesn’t look much like a person but, what if it is? Quickly. I don’t like the look of this. It’s something green and covered in dust. I touch it to see what it is. A part of the thing that’s covered in dust turns out to be the grey skin of a woman’s back.

It’s a person! Alive or dead? Quickly, come on, quickly, look for a pulse. Where? I can’t see the head or the arms. Her leg is at a very strange angle and her shoe is missing. Where is her fucking pulse? There’s her neck. She’s face down.

I put my hand underneath to try and find a pulse. I feel the warmth of the skin on her neck and something’s moving. She’s got a pulse, there it is! Is she conscioius? I don’t want to move her in case she has broken something in her neck or her back. I pinch her back and neck. Nothing; she doesn’t respond.

I look up to see what else is going on. What the fuck is all this? What to do? Someone is trying to move one of the women on the ground. “Not there! Don’t move her until the firemen get here!” Where are the firemen? At least this hasn’t caught fire, otherwise we’d really be in trouble.

I help an old man get up and try and get out of the rubble and we both fall over. He falls below me and it’s an effort to get him out again. I can see people wearing red jackets. The Red Cross is arriving and the first-aiders jump straight onto the rubble.

“Over there,” I tell one of them, “get over there, quickly, there’s a woman in a very bad state but she still has a pulse. Get over there quickly!” The man rushes over and also falls among the rubble. He makes it to the woman a few moments later.

I climb down to where the two women are lying and they tell me they feel very cold. When I look up again a couple of minutes later, I see that the Red Cross team has stopped work on the woman in the green jumper. That means she’s dead, I tell myself. They start trying to help the woman with broken legs next to her.

A dark train

More first-aiders from the Red Cross arrive and I can see some firemen. They are starting to get a grip on things and there’s a fireman shouting to his mates that they need to send more people: “They need to send more people here right now!” It looks like there are firemen and Red Cross people with all of the casualties I’ve come across.

What if there are casualties in the carriages, trapped? I ask a Red Cross girl for a torch and go forward to have a look. I climb into the train and ask if anyone’s injured. They say they’re not, so I keep walking down the train and looking under the seats. Nothing.

I walk down the inside of the train. In the first carriages, everything looks pretty normal and people are climbing back up to get their luggage out, looking shocked. One girl asks me for the torch to look for her things. I say no. I get to the buffet car and it’s empty, all of the stools are overturned. Is the oven on? Probably not, seen as no-one’s left here.

I keep walking. I get to my carriage and there are bags and bits of broken glass all over the floor. I climb out of the same door-hole as before, taking care to miss the electric cable. I go back to the firemen and tell them there’s no-one else.

There are a lot of injured people screaming. We help a fireman to move the rubble but then we stop because there are people trapped and there’s nowhere to throw it with so many people lying around.

They have put the old man I fell down with before onto a stretcher improvised out of a bit of the carriage and I help them to move him up to the path and put him in an ambulance. There is already another stretcher inside and the bit-of-carriage stretcher doesn’t fit so we leave him on the ground for the moment.

Meeting Pura and Sali

We climb down to where the women with the broken legs are. Two firemen are trying to put her onto a foldable stretcher. She looks at me like she’s very scared. I hold her hand and her gaze. They’re getting you out now, I think. Even the smallest movements hurt. “Keep looking at me, love, hold my hand tight. As tight as you like. Come on, hold it tight and keep looking at me. That’s it.“

One of the fireman has trouble fitting part of the stretcher in place around her neck so I hold her head while the fireman sorts out the stretcher. We lift her up and leave here a couple of metres away from where we had left the old man a few minutes earlier. I stay with her and take hold of her hand again because she looks very, very scared and like she has no idea what is happening to her. Don’t worry, love, you’re safe now.

I start to chat to her so that she can take her mind off her legs. She’s from Murcia and lives in the Plaza Cetina. “Where is my sister?” she asks me, crying. “Your sister?” The woman that was lying next to her. “She’s right here behind you on another stretcher. You can’t see her because your both lying on stretchers.”

“But is she alright?” “She’s ok, there’s someone with her, too. Look, she’s just here.” I take her hand and stretch it out so that she can touch her sister’s foot. “You see? Just there.” The woman I’m with tells me here name is Pura. “¿Pura?” “Yes, Pura.” “And your sister?” “Rosalía. ¿How is she” “Ok, she’s ok. There are doctors with her.”

I don’t tell Pura that what I can see scares me. The doctors are hooking her sister up to all sorts of IV drips and blood bags, and covering her with aluminium blankets to try and keep her warm.

“Your sister is ok, Pura, the doctors are with her. Come on, keep looking at me, squeeze my hand a bit more.” She is really trying hard not to cry. Her face and hair are completely covered in dust.

My phone rings and I answer. On the screen it says it’s just past eight o’clock. It’s the friend who was supposed to be picking me up at Murcia train station, asking what time I’m arriving. I tell him that the train’s crashed and that we’re sitting here surrounded by injured and dead people but that I’m alright and that I’ll call him back later. He hangs up.

“How is my sister?” Pura asks me again. “She’s ok, Pura, they’re with her.” The doctors are hooking Rosalía up to more tubes and a female doctor is explaining to an uninjured survivor how to hold the IV bag properly. I think we need a lot of doctors around here right now.

Pura asks me where her mum is. “You’re mum’s here too!” She’s also called Rosalía. “She’s just by your feet, Pura. Look, hold your hand out to mum. That’s it.” Her mother can’t sit down or bend over because here back hurts.

I leave Pura for a moment and talk with the old man who we had pulled out. He says he can’t see anything and I can see that his eyes are almost closed and coeverd with blood. He’s holding his glasses case to his chest and starts to tell me in a low, difficult-to-hear voice that he can’t breathe properly. That’s not good.

I grab one of the guys from the Red Cross and tell him about it: “This guy says he can’t breathe properly.” He rushes off to find a doctor and a breathing bag. When he comes back I let him work and go back to Pura.

Pura feels very cold now so we we cover her with jackets and jumpers. “How come you were all travelling together?” I ask, “why have you all been to Madrid?” “We’ve just been to my uncle’s funeral.” No way. The first doctor arrives to look Pura over. “My legs,” she tells him, “my legs really hurt.”

She screams when the doctor touches her right leg. “Squeeze my hand, Pura, hold it tight.” She screams again, louder this time. “Get off my fucking leg!” she screams. The doctor checks our her upper body and everything seems ok, so he moves on to the next person.

Another doctor is shouting that he wants 100% for all of them, they’re really bad. I sit and wonder for a few seconds what he’s referring to with 100% and suppose it must be doctor’s slang for the oxygen. A man brings a bottle over and puts it down next to Rosalía.

They need more ambulances and more keep arriving. A female doctor comes over to look at Pura. “Tell them not to touch my legs” she urges. “Hey, don’t touch her legs, they’re in a bit of a state.” Someone touches her leg and Pura cries out again. “Don’t touch here fucking leg, it’s broken!”

The doctor tries to get an IV line into Pura’s wrist but she can’t find a vein. She manages it after several tries. I keep looking into her eyes and squeezing her hand. Someone starts to lift up her stretcher and put it into the ambulance. She’s gone.

The girl from Nigeria

The old man is still on the floor with the doctors and they’ve plugged him into to a computer; there are loads of firemen, doctors and civil guards around now. I can see that the passengers who had remained by the other carriages are starting to file past the casualties and the rubble. I realise that I can’t doing anything else to help.

I go back to where my carriage was and see that the girl is still holding my computer and that the boy who was sitting on the other side of the carriage has picked up my bags. The computer doesn’t work and I’ve lost my jackets. It doesn’t seem to matter at all.

The girl who has been looking after my computer is from Nigeria. I can’t pronounce her name properly. I realise I feel very cold too and that I’m starting to shiver. Probably because I’m just wearing a t-shirt. I stop for a moment, open my bags and put a jumper on. The Nigerian girl is having trouble with one of her suitcases, so I grab it and we wander up to the main road.

She covers her eyes when we walk between the rubble and the line of casualties, where five minutes before I’d been with Pura and her sister. Several people are still there on stretchers waiting for ambulances.

I can only see a lump covered with white blankets where I’d found the woman with the green jumper. I see two Red Cross girls trying to clean the dust off Pura’s mum’s face.

When we make it to the road, I turn round and look at it all from above. There are loads of ambulance and Civil Guard vehicles on the road and the bridge. The girl from Nigeria and another one we’ve picked up on the way walk down to the village.

I speak to my friends to tell them I’m alright and that they needn’t worry when they see the news. I hang up and see Pura’s mum next to me. I help her get on a minibus to take her to the village; her back hurts.

Now what?

I phone my friends again and they tell me they’ll come and pick me up. I call a friend who lives in Tobarra to see if she fancies a drink, seen as I’m in her village, but she doesn’t answer.

I call another friend in Madrid and whilst I’m talking to her I realise that the hole in the train I jumped out of at the start – the door with the electric cable hanging down in front of it – was where the train must have split in two, between the first and second carriages. Two metres behind my seat.

I hang up. I don’t really know what to say.