Two-hundred and seventy four people were on board when a Spanish train hit a sharp bend, derailed from the tracks, crashed and caught on fire near the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela at 8:41 p.m. last night, and 78 people were killed in the gruesome disaster, according to Reuters.
A security camera captured shocking footage from the accident as the train careered into a wall at the side of the track, train carriages jack-knifing and the engine overturning. Bodies were strewn across the tracks in a gruesome scene, the accident happening on the eve of one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals in the city.
"We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there," Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters.
A spokeswoman for Galicia's Supreme Court said to Reuters that the driver of the train, operated by state-owned company Renfre, is currently under formal investigation, and as the train had two drivers and one is currently in the hospital, it is unclear which one is being investigated by police.
Spanish newspapers cite witnesses who helped pull victims from the debris. According to El Pais newspaper, one of the drivers of the train told the railway station by radio after he was trapped in his cabin following the crash, "We're only human! We're only human! I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience." When the train derailed, it was going 120 mph, twice the permitted speed.
Currently investigators are trying to understand why the train was going so fast and why security devices installed to maintain a safe speed had not been working.
This morning, cranes pulled mangled debris from the scene of the accident as emergency workers helped search for survivors. Even firefighters that had been on strike called it off to help out, while hospital staff worked over-time to help the injured.
"When the dust lifted I saw corpses. I didn't make it down to the track, because I was helping the passengers that were coming up the embankment," Ana Taboada, a 29-year-old hospital worker who was one of the first to arrive on the scene told Reuters. "I saw a man trying to break a window with a stone to help those inside get out."
In total, 178 people were taken to the hospital, and 95 are currently being treated, according to government officials. Four children were in serious condition.
Passenger Ricardo Montesco told a radio station that the train twisted, wagons piling on top of each other as it crashed in high speed. "A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning...I was in the second wagon and there was fire...I saw corpses," he said.
Clinics in Santiago de Compostela was overwhelmed with people coming in to donate blood, Reuters reports, while local hotels set up rooms for relatives of the victims.
Last night's accident was one of the worst rail accidents in Europe in the past 25 years.
