train crash<\/a> nearby on Friday that has left the storybook Bedfordshire village, with its Tudor houses and lush, stony gardens, reeling. He said air ambulances hovered above the area into the evening as the scale of the tragedy became clear.<\/p>\nTaxi drivers told the Guardian they had driven stranded passengers all the way to London as they scrambled to return home.<\/p>\n
From those onboard when the trains collided, stories emerged of the sheer shock and terror they faced. Brett Byatt, a teacher from Bedford who was on one of the trains, told the BBC\u2019s Today programme he saw most people on his full carriage \u201cbleeding profusely, or a situation where they couldn\u2019t stand, or they couldn\u2019t move their neck, and I saw a woman snap her leg\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Salvation Army sent a food lorry to the Elstow area after the collision. Photograph: Chris Radburn\/PA<\/p>\n
Another passenger onboard one of the struck trains, Dr Peter Knapp, said: \u201cSuddenly there was an impact. I thought it was a bomb, I saw a lot of smoke and people on the floor, bloodied faces. A lot of people crying and screaming. In a video posted on social media, passengers can be seen bloodied and screaming shortly after the impact. \u201cI managed to open the doors and squeeze out. I was in quite a lot of shock, my glasses had fallen off. We were in the middle of nowhere in a field,\u201d Knapp said.<\/p>\n
The crash between EMR services between St Pancras and Corby and St Pancras and Nottingham has left one train driver dead and nine people in a critical condition. In total 100 people were injured.<\/p>\n
One Elstow local, who did not want to be named, was in the car with her daughter near the crash site when it became clear \u201csomething devastating\u201d had happened. \u201cI witnessed emergency services flying around and you could sense there was panic,\u201d she said. \u201cThe sense of worry and anxiety of knowing something dreadful had happened was unnerving in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said some of her neighbours were on that train. \u201cSome really good friends of mine were on that train and have got significant injuries,\u201d she said, including one with a head injury. Another friend onboard ran out of battery on her phone. \u201cHer husband couldn\u2019t find her until 4am. For him, it must have been tragic not knowing what happened to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elstow high street. Residents of the Bedfordshire village said the mood was \u2018sombre\u2019 after the crash. Photograph: Marcus Hill\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The woman said her friend\u2019s son had full view of the crash site from his house. \u201cThere was loads of people throwing out water and food over the fence. They did everything they could to try and help those people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her daughter, like many other people in the village, regularly uses the EMR service. \u201cThere\u2019s a sombre mood in the village. Everyone\u2019s feeling emotional,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Another villager, who did not want to be named, was on an EMR train back from London after watching Les Miserables. He knew something was amiss when \u201cone of my party started getting texts saying: \u2018Are you OK?\u2019\u201d. Not long after, they all began receiving similar messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a commuter town and so many people use those trains. Even though it was commuter time thankfully it was a Friday,\u201d he said. Nevertheless, he was concerned because \u201cthere was a Harry Styles concert and a lot of people from Bedford were going to that\u201d.<\/p>\n
He thinks the impact of the crash will be felt throughout the village and the wider area. \u201cOur kids go to the local Bedford school. It\u2019s inevitable that some people connected with the schools will have been impacted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the classic shock of \u2018it doesn\u2019t happen to us\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cThe trains are such a big part of local life. It makes everybody realise it could have been them or their children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The weekend in Elstow usually sees jolly locals romping around the quaint, picturesque village walking their dogs or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-649806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}