Survivor: Train Car Was 'Pierced Like Carving Meat'

In the wake of a deadly train crash in Spain that has left at least 68 people dead, the New York Times speaks with a survivor. Fernando Seco says he was returning home from business and was about 30 minutes into the Madrid-to-Seville trip when the train paused for several minutes; an overhead announcement cited heavy traffic. Shortly after things got moving again, there was a "very violent crash" as his train rear-ended one ahead; the 62-year-old had been in the back of the train and said his car filled with screams.

Seco says farmworkers cut through a fence so passengers could escape down an embankment, at which point he saw cars up ahead tossed from the tracks. "A rail beam had pierced right through a carriage from bottom to top, like carving meat," he says, and he was struck by the quiet as he approached those cars, which he attributed to people being too injured to speak. Seco says he joined with others to start removing the injured from the wreckage using debris as improvised stretchers. That's when the screaming began, he said. Read the full piece here. The BBC reports the current toll makes it Spain's deadliest train crash since a 2013 crash that left 80 people dead.