Reacción a "Emotional impact of the crash between two high-speed trains on relatives, survivors and train users"

During the [Madrid train station bombings] on 11 March [2004], I was the deputy coordinator of the emergency response team of the Madrid College of Psychologists, and I was part of the College's Emergency Working Group. 

[Regarding the Adamuz train accident] With a tragedy of this nature, with such a high number of fatalities, you have an impact on primary victims, who suffered injuries –I haven't seen the latest data, the figure could reach 200 injured people or more– with the physical and psychological consequences that this may entail for them. Then there are  secondary victims: relatives of the deceased, whose numbers are increasing by the minute, as well as the seriously injured; and tertiary victims, in the longer term, workers who will be all those involved in this situation, from the very first minute until, surely, a week later: emergency teams, police, healthcare professionals and psychologists, including ourselves. 

And then, a disaster of this nature and magnitude shakes the whole of society. There is a certain fourth-level victimology, which is the impact on people who have experienced similar tragedies. To put it bluntly, their emotions are stirred up. People who have experienced these situations hear about this and begin to recover memories and recollections of what they themselves have experienced. 

This emotional shock can occur at all levels. [...] We all know that, when there is grief, psychologists have a follow-up task, to see a posteriori how the situation evolves. Grief is not pathological, but it must be monitored and evaluated to ensure that it does not become something that could be more problematic in the long term. 

The predictable pattern of what is happening and what is going to happen is already well known because, unfortunately, we have had similar tragedies, and we can see the repercussions at the levels I mentioned earlier.