A deafening noise, violent shaking, then windows shattering. For the 186 passengers who were on board the train linking Rouen to Caen this Friday evening, September 11, a few seconds were enough to transform an ordinary journey into a scene of chaos. Around 7:45 p.m., while traveling between the stations of Tourville and Elbeuf-Saint-Aubin, near Rouan, the TER in which they were seated suddenly derailed. Probably the consequence of an act of voluntary sabotage, according to the first elements of the investigation, the toll of which is heavy: 44 injured, including a young 18-year-old woman evacuated by helicopter “in absolute emergency”.
“I tried to hold on to the front seat”
The first testimonies collected are chilling. Louis, 24, told ICI Normandie that he first felt “a few shocks”, before they became, “after three seconds”, increasingly stronger. “I could no longer hold on to my seat (...) I tried to hold on to the seat in front,” he says. Then the windows “partially exploded” and “the stones from the track entered the wagon”. Although he seems to have escaped without any after-effects, the scene continues to haunt him several hours after the events: “It was really shocking, I’m still shaking.”
Others, like Luis Branco, who was in the second train, did not escape unscathed. “We heard a loud noise, followed by tremors. Then we saw the first car of the train take off and the windows break,” this passenger told TF1info. In a few seconds, he remembers, “the first car overturned and I no longer had a train in front of me.” A few moments later, Luis was “facing the rails”, with “nothing to protect him”, report our colleagues. Injured in the face, he was then treated at the Rouen University Hospital. According to his testimony, help arrived “around twenty minutes after the derailment”.
“There were maybe 150 or 200 people out in the forest”
Inside the cars, travelers quickly discovered the extent of the injuries. A passenger told TF1info in particular that he saw a young man with a “bloody face”. “It shocked me and it made me cry,” he confides. But once the train stops, the urgency is to get out of the wagons. Xavier, another passenger contacted by franceinfo, says he heard a “huge noise” before the train stopped. “Everyone was very scared. Like everyone else, I thought I was going to die.” The controller then asks the passengers to leave the train and move away. “There were maybe 150 or 200 people outside in the forest,” Xavier tells franceinfo.
The uninjured passengers were finally grouped together in a performance hall made available by the Cléon town hall. For some, the wait and the aftermath of the accident are particularly difficult to live with. “I said to myself: I’m going to die today,” a passenger, who is painfully recovering from the “adrenaline peak” caused by the episode, told LCI. Xavier says his son came to pick him up. On the phone, the emotion was too strong for him to be able to speak to her immediately. “At first I couldn’t talk to him because I started crying all the time,” he confides to franceinfo. From now on, he especially hopes “not to have a nightmare” after this experience.
On site, the prefect of Seine-Maritime triggered the Orsec “many victims” plan (NOVI). The first elements communicated by the prosecution also indicate that the alcohol and drug tests carried out on the train driver were “all negative”. The trail of malicious act is favored after the discovery of a piece of rail on the track where the accident took place, a police source told AFP on Saturday morning. Friday evening, significant emergency resources were mobilized, with 130 firefighters, five medical teams and 80 vehicles.
