Madrid – Free taxi rides, the release of more work for health workers and psychologists, the longest wait to donate blood… On March 11, 2004, Madrid woke up with noise and chaos, but went to bed in an overwhelming silence, and the largest attack ever seen in the city gave way to the greatest response of solidarity.
It was not even eight in the morning when the first explosion occurred, and before the emergency services arrived in Atocha there were already volunteers removing injured people from the trains, those workers – such as those from the cleaning and garden service of the Madrid City Council – who, with nothing more than their hands, helped the first victims.
Firefighters, health workers and police still did not have enough stretchers but in minutes they found dozens, hundreds, of blankets and sheets that were raining down from the blocks neighboring the tracks to be able to transport the injured and cover the less seriously injured.
Without enough ambulances in the first moments, city buses and dozens of taxis took the injured to hospitals and then dedicated the day to transporting – without charge – relatives, health workers and psychologists who, despite not working that day, did what they did. It was probably his longest work day.
“Desperation” to help
José Miguel Fúnez, who still did not have his own taxi, finished working the night of March 10 to 11 around two or three in the morning, and when he had not slept five hours his family woke him up: several bombs had exploded in Atocha and other Cercanías stations.
It didn’t take him long to reach an area immersed in chaos, where the police themselves asked taxi drivers to take injured people to hospitals and where, beyond the pain or destruction, he was struck by “the desperate face of people you didn’t know but who were wishing I could do something” to help, as he explains to EFE.
That and the silence were shocking. The silence of those who got into the taxis, who in many cases did not speak a word until they reached the hospitals, both injured and health personnel who went to work out of shift, or psychologists who came to Ifema to provide support to the families who were looking for their loved ones. beloved.
Help while in shock
Fúnez also remembers how the residents of Vallecas went out of their way: a rain of blankets and sheets fell from the windows to cover or even transport the wounded, and they went down to offer food and drink to firefighters, health workers, police, taxi drivers or volunteers who worked for hours in the place.
What do you say in a taxi to a person who has just learned that his or her family member is among the dead? Or a doctor or nurse who returns home after almost 24 hours of work in a hospital ‘at war’? “You can’t say anything. You’re in shock too. “You spend your time driving, helping them get out of the taxi…” she recalls.
And if any of those passengers want to talk, “you act like a psychologist without being one, without training to help them. You try to measure the words,” continues Fúnez, who remembers “very limited” conversations in a situation “that you don’t even understand.”
Organize selfless help
Psychologists were needed, and many, that March 11 and the days that followed, when it was necessary to support the families in their grieving and the professionals – health workers, police, firefighters… – who were on the front line of the barbarism.
Aid planning
Fernando Chacón was dean of the College of Psychologists of Madrid at that time and before taking the children to school he listened to the news at home. Without knowing why, he thought of 60 deaths as the limit figure for the health system to be able to provide the psychological care necessary in a situation of this magnitude. When the number was exceeded, he called the emergency service to coordinate the volunteer psychologists.
Because, as he explains to EFE, help cannot be offered without good planning, and fortunately Spanish psychologists already had experience after another previous tragedy: the Biescas flood in August 1996.
The need for psychologists to care for the victims of that flood sparked an interest in these professionals in training in emergency care.
Volunteer ‘filters’
That is why, from the first hour of 11M, the Madrid College of Psychologists put in place the machinery to collect the requests for help that came from hospitals or funeral homes, and assign the psychologists who called to offer their help.
“We made a small filter, we prioritized those who had given emergency care courses, and then professionals with clinical experience,” he recalls, and remembers how the College did not go to rest until the volunteer shift for that event was perfectly organized. night and for the next morning.
Their work was fundamental in Ifema, where families hoped to be able to identify the bodies or belongings of their loved ones, but also in funeral homes, even in the 112 call center.
Chacón remembers that that Thursday, with the mobile lines collapsed in Madrid, many people called 112 as a last resort to find out if their family member or close friend was on the list of fatalities or injuries. When this was the case, attempts were made to have a volunteer psychologist deliver the painful news.
They also did therapy with the professionals – health workers, firefighters, police… – who intervened in the attacks, and even Summa began to incorporate psychologists into some of its mobile units, because “the level of anxiety in the population skyrocketed” those days. .
Did those psychologists need psychological help?
Chacón explains that among themselves they did the same thing that they applied with health workers or firefighters, a ‘debriefing’: before returning home, everyone who had worked together that day met to verbalize their feelings, listen to each other’s impressions and try to assimilate what they had. vivid.
Almost a thousand psychologists participated selflessly for about two weeks to attend on all fronts, “the largest intervention that has taken place in the entire world, that I know of.” Today, 20 years later, there is a significant professionalization of emergency psychologists and “more refined” protocols.
Looking for how to help
If health workers, psychologists or taxi drivers quickly found a way to help, the rest of the people looked for ways to do their part in a city that went, in hours, from chaos and noise to silence.
Pilar de la Peña today heads the Promotion Department of the Transfusion Center of the Community of Madrid, but on March 11, 2004 she was a “rank” nurse and, that Thursday, she planned to go to the mobile blood donation unit that was he was going to install in the Forestry School of the Polytechnic University.
Those mobile units, he remembers, collected about 17 or 20 donations a day at the doors of the faculties. On March 11, when traffic chaos allowed the donation bus to reach the Forestry School, there were already at least 60 people queuing to donate.
“The entire donation planning had to be restructured,” he recalls, and if what was expected was to call on the population to come and donate blood, that day they had to ask people to wait a few days to donate.
“The queue in the center of Madrid, at the Puerta del Sol mobile unit, reached all the way to the Plaza de Ópera,” so at the authorized points the health workers had to make a “selection,” giving priority to those who were habitual donors -they knew the process and ran less risk of getting dizzy-, and especially those in groups 0+ and 0-.
The entire team of professionals at the Transfusion Center also had to be reinforced, because blood cannot be used if it has not been previously analyzed and processed. “Everyone went to work that day, and at night no one wanted to go home.”
Help between sadness, tension and silence
De la Peña remembers the hours of extraction inside the bus: tension, tears, sadness, emotion, but above all an overwhelming silence. “In the middle of the morning we had to turn off the radio to stop listening, we didn’t want to know more.”
If normally 500 or 600 bags of blood are collected a day in Madrid, on March 11 and 12, 2004, more than 5,000 were collected, “impressive” figures that have never been repeated, not even at times when the population responds overwhelmingly, as when the Spanair plane crashed in Barajas in August 2008, or the Alvia accident in Santiago in July 2013.
The people of Madrid, Pilar de la Peña and José Miguel Fúnez agree, respond quickly to crisis situations, so it was not surprising that the biggest catastrophe in the capital was followed by the biggest wave of solidarity.
This is how a plaque in Puerta del Sol remembers it: “Madrid is grateful to all those who knew how to do their duty in helping the victims of the attacks of March 11, 2004 and to all the anonymous citizens who helped them. May the memory of the victims and the exemplary behavior of the people of Madrid always remain.”
BY: TTU
