Twenty injured when jumping from a train surrounded by flames in Caudiel – Las Provincias

Train from which the passengers have jumped. / TXEMA RODRÍGUEZThree people seriously burned after fleeing from a convoy that went from Valencia to Zaragoza and encountered fireAt least 25 people have been injured, three of them seriously, fleeing from a train that has found itself face to face with hell of the Bejís forest fire between Masadas Blancas and Barracas, north of Caudiel, in Alto Palancia. The devilish winds that have swept the north of this region of Castellón throughout Tuesday have ended up pushing the fire to the east and that is where a convoy that made the journey between the North station in Valencia and the Miraflores station in Zaragoza has met with fire. The two most serious injuries were in the La Fe Hospital in Valencia. One of them is a 58-year-old woman with a very serious prognosis due to burns who has been transferred by helicopter, and the other is a 15-year-old girl with a milder prognosis but with burns on 7% of her body. A mother and her son arrived at the Clinical Hospital, but as explained by the Minister of Health, Miguel Mínguez, in À Punt, the woman was going to be transferred to La Fe due to her condition. In addition, two other people have been treated at the Sagunto Hospital, and one of them was also going to be sent, at the close of this edition, to the reference hospital for burns in the Community. Between 8 and 10 wounded have been treated in Caudiel and transferred to the field hospital in Jérica. In addition, the Red Cross has treated another eight people in Viver for minor injuries. Video. Firefighters try to contain the flames of the fire in the Vall d’Ebo. / Bombers Diputació Castelló It was not clear, at the close of this edition, the time the accident occurred. Although the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, reported at 7:31 p.m. that “something” had happened on the train in Caudiel and that the injured were being treated by ambulances. Everything seems to indicate that the accident occurred at 6:22 p.m., when the 4:22 p.m. convoy reached the Alto Palancia area. That is when the driver saw that the fire had jumped the track, so she decided to stop the train and notify Renfe. According to Adif sources, the driver has moved from the cabin from the front to the rear, and it is then, when she has crossed the train, that she has panicked. Despite the “great professionalism” of the driver, according to Adif, who was explaining to the 48 passengers on the train that there was nothing to fear and that he was going to return to Caudiel to continue the bus route, groups of passengers would have succumbed to panic and they would have managed to open the doors or break the windows, always according to the Railway Infrastructure Manager, to escape from the train. However, they fell straight into the fire. Most managed to get back on the train, which headed towards Caudiel, but there were also people who walked to Viver through the tracks, although they were disoriented. According to witnesses interviewed in À Punt, the wounded at the Caudiel station were covered by gauze and thermal blankets. As they have explained from Renfe, the line was not cut, so the train was running normally. Like so many other things in the Community these days, the change of wind was unpredictable and sent the fire towards the tracks, so the driver unexpectedly found the fire. “If it wasn’t for her, it would have been much worse,” commented the same sources. Some images recorded from inside the train and posted on Twitter show huge flames a few meters from the windows. It was this situation that caused what the Government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, described as a “panic attack” and made the passengers try to escape from the train. The convoy returned to Caudiel and it was there that dozens of ambulances (“they don’t stop passing through the A-23,” they said in Viver in the middle of the afternoon) treated them and transferred them to hospitals in Valencia where they were treated, especially in the case of major burns. La Fe is one of the leading centers in the treatment of these wounds in the country. Two firefighters injured In addition, there were two forest firefighters injured during the work of extinguishing the fire in Torás, where they worked to prevent the fire from reaching the town after the wind turned by surprise and forced the evacuation of the towns of Bejís, Teresa and the Torah itself. They were transferred to the Sagunto Hospital, where they were discharged hours later on Tuesday afternoon.