Abandoned in the middle of nowhere, terrified of cold, without blankets and without knowing when they would get them out of there. Thus, the travelers of a high -speed ouigo train that traveled from Malaga to Madrid have passed the night when the blackout arrested the convoy at 80km from Córdoba, in the immediate vicinity of the municipality of Brazattas (Ciudad Real).
It was one of the hundreds of convoys to which the electrical failure stopped where they were. After the first minutes after 12.33 -the incident time -, travelers affected in rail services were hundreds of thousands; Around 6:00 p.m., when the Minister of Transportation appeared, there were still about 25 convoys; Already eleven o’clock at night, while President Pedro Sánchez appeared at the Moncloa Palace, eleven waited for the rescue, the last ones. In his appearance, Sánchez said that Renfe, Adif and the Military Emergency Unit worked to rescue these passengers, but the truth is that The Ouigo Málaga-Madrid has not yet arrived.
ABC has spoken with Gonzalo Alcelay, who has been waiting for about twenty hours on the train along with another hundreds of passengers; The worst, the night, when temperatures have fallen about five degrees: «It has been terrible. We have had the feeling that we were thrown like dogs ». The most distressing, according to this young man, has been the fact that in all that time they have not received clear information or the help of emergency services, beyond rations of the Red Cross. If the pregnant women, the children and some older people could leave the convoy, he explains, it was because the neighbors of Brazatattas went to the rescue. “They had to cut the fence to access where the train was,” says Gonzalo.
The food rations sent by the Red Cross
The chronology has been the following. After more than an hour stopped in the middle of a field, the passengers received the first news from the personnel that the electricity had fallen throughout Spain. They remained inside the convoy until after two in the afternoon, when Heat became unbearable and Ouigo’s staff opened the doors at the request of the passengers.
And there they would be around one in the morning, when, given the impossibility of arriving in Madrid, the train moved slowly to the nearest station, Villanueva de Córdoba.
At that time it was already thirteen hours that passengers were waiting, and ahead they had a very long night. A 77 -year -old Cordoba passenger explains to ABC that due to the cold – there were no blankets – he could not sleep anything even though the youngest had given him two seats to stretch: “It has been horrible,” ditch.
Passengers have improvised breakfast in Villanueva de Córdoba
The first ‘official’ help that has arrived in Villanueva de Córdoba has come in the form of red cross food packs that Adif’s staff has sent them at eight in the morning. When ABC has collected these testimonies, it was 9:30 and the UME had not yet arrived or any emergency service, although there are older people on the train, Gonzalo explains. The last news they have is that Ouigo will send a new driver – on board staff is too tired to operate the locomotive – so that the train concludes the trip.
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