- Title: SPAIN: Rescuer talks about the moments following the Spanair crash
- Date: 25th August 2008
- Summary: MADRID, SPAIN (AUGUST 24, 2008) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) HEAD OF THE SAMUR RESCUE TEAM THAT ARRIVED AT THE CRASH SITE AND RESCUED SURVIVORS, ERVIGIO CORRAL, SAYING: "We transferred the survivors to a provisional hospital on site and then we proceeded to put them into ambulances. We lined up the ambulances in order to place those in more critical condition into ambu
- Embargoed: 9th September 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Spain
- Country: Spain
- Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Transport
- Reuters ID: LVA7EXN11K3XI7VOUW7ZLATJ4KYC
- Story Text: The man who lead the team of rescuers of the victims and survivors of the Spanair plane crash, tells what he found and how he and his team assisted 20 survivors from the plane's wreckage.
The man who led the rescue operation of the victims and survivors of the Spanair crash in Madrid confesses he was not expecting any survivors when he and his team arrived at the accident site on August 21.
"We found a very disperse scene of bodies and injured people in which your first impression is that you are not going to find anyone alive," he told Reuters Television in an interview.
" We suspected that we were not going to find any person alive. It seemed to me like all of them were dead."
But then the head of operations of the Madrid Emergency Rescue Service (SAMUR) saw something moving and heard voices.
"We saw a small portion of the plane, between rows 7 and 11 of the plane in which there were people alive, some of them had even stood up by themselves and asked for help. We ran immediately with firefighters to that area and began the rescue operation."
"We took 20 people from that portion of the plane and we proceeded with the second part of the operation which was to group the survivors. We lined up the ambulances in order to place those in more critical condition into ambulances with a doctor and a nurse and those in better condition in basic units. That was our procedure until we managed to evacuate all twenty patients. I think it didn't take us more than 45 minutes," Corral said.
Once all survivors were sent to hospitals, Corral and his team of more than one hundred people, spent long hours in the task of recovering the victim's bodies.
"We spent almost four hours picking up bodies, until we cleaned the area. We also had to recover the personal belongings of the passengers, so we made a human chain of more that 100 people to recover all personal belongings of the victims and survivors in that large area."
Corral, a 48-year-old doctor says he couldn't help recalling the morning of March 11, 2004 when had to lead a very similar operation during the Atocha train bombing that killed 191 people in the Spanish capital.
Corral who helped found the SAMUR in 1991 and worked as an emergency-ambulance doctor thereafter is very proud of his job but prefers not to speak publicly about the events or his interaction with the survivors.
Corral was included by TIME magazine in its list of world heroes in 2004 for his job after the Madrid bombings. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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