69 Dead as Two Spanish High-Speed Trains Collide

César Vicente arrived in Toledo on Thursday to search for his father. He had driven 307 miles from Seville after learning his relative was on a train that had crashed. Vicente, an actor, sat in a religious center that officials converted into a base for victims. He described the uncertainty of not knowing where his father was. “I hope to find him, oh my Lord,” he said.

The collision occurred the previous day when two high-speed trains struck each other in central Spain. At least 69 people died. Authorities reported 180 people were injured. Of those, 110 were taken to hospitals. The accident involved a train operated by the state company RENFE and a private Iryo train. The Iryo train had stopped on the tracks when the RENFE train hit it.

Vicente’s mother and aunt were also at the shelter. They searched for the man in seat 13A of the RENFE car. The family walked outside to check for news despite the cold. Vicente called the experience unbearable. “This is hell,” he said.

Relatives turned to social media to locate missing passengers. Friends posted photos and descriptions of clothing to identify travelers. Alejandra Marroquín posted on Instagram that her sister Adriana was missing. She described Adriana as wearing dark blue clothes in car 8 of the RENFE train. “We’re still praying, we don’t know anything,” Marroquín wrote on Thursday morning. Search teams with sniffer dogs continued looking for victims at the site.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke to reporters on Thursday. He said the government was working to help families and strengthen security. “The entire government is working to respond to the victims’ families, shed light on the tragedy, and strengthen security so that this never happens again,” Sánchez said.

This was the second fatal high-speed rail disaster in Spain this year. In January, 46 people died when a train jumped the tracks and hit another train in southern Spain. Spain’s high-speed network is the second largest in the world, after China’s. It had operated without a deadly crash for more than 30 years until this year.

Residents of Urda, a town of 2,500 people south of Madrid, responded quickly. David Gómez, a construction worker, was near the site with his brother and a colleague. They heard the crash and ran to help. “People were trying to get out through the windows … We cut through some fences to access the area and treated people with the first-aid kits we had brought until emergency services arrived,” Gómez told the newspaper El País. Locals carried passengers from the tracks to a sports pavilion in their cars.

Authorities called for blood donations after the crash. More than 2,000 people volunteered in the Castilla-La Mancha region. Emiliano García-Page, the region’s president, thanked the volunteers. He noted an all-time record number of donations. He also thanked the 1,300 emergency service personnel who were mobilized for the response.