Overwhelmed, a city struggles to bury its dead
MADRID -- Jose Ramon and his wife, Teresa, a couple for 10 years, used to ride the train together every day to work.
Yesterday, their coffins lay side by side, surrounded by flowers in Madrid's biggest funeral home. They were among the 200 people killed when 10 backpack bombs ripped through Madrid commuter trains at morning rush-hour Thursday.
The Tanatorio Sur mortuary, a sprawling, rectangular red-brick building, has individual parlor facilities for 60 coffins. It was overwhelmed yesterday, two days after the biggest terror attack in Spain.
The coffins of Jose Ramon Moreno Isarch, 37, and Maria Teresa Mora
Outside, a steady stream of hearses carried coffins in and out all morning. Other bodies were taken to Madrid's second funeral parlor, which has room for 27. Sports complexes in outlying towns took the overflow.
Distraught families filtered through Tanatorio Sur, checking lists of victims' names displayed on two monitors at the entrance to see which rooms held their loved ones.
"My son. Why?" repeatedly sobbed a woman, leaning on relatives.
Dozens of counselors and Spanish Red Cross volunteers were available.
"Every story is a drama. We have to help without getting involved," said Noelia Olmo, a Red Cross worker. "We have seen grandparents of dead grandchildren, fathers whose sons and daughters are gone and their friends. These are tough experiences."
Antonio Palacios, a counselor, said, "Up to now, people have been in pure shock."
Now "they have to start facing the reality that their loved ones are dead," he said.
Room 35 held Neil Astocondo, a 30-year-old Peruvian whose wife and two children stayed in Lima, Peru's capital, while he worked construction in Madrid.
"He was going to get his residency papers this month after being here two years," said his cousin Stuart Cordoba.
Astocondo was killed at El Pozo station. Two bombs blew apart the double-decker train in which he was riding. Spain's national airline will fly his body home to Peru on Wednesday for free.
In Room 45, a woman named Angelica clutched her 6-year-old son, Ignacio, as she wept before the coffin of her husband, Hector Figueroa, a 33-year-old construction worker from Santiago, Chile. He also died at El Pozo. A Chilean flag hung behind his coffin.
The family had lived in Spain just eight months.
The 200 dead included 32 foreigners from 12 countries, the Spanish government said. Most lived in Alcala de Henares, a town 12 miles from Madrid, or in bedroom communities along the route from there to the capital.
At a Catholic Mass yesterday in an Alcala sports complex, 800 mourners prayed for the victims. Two coffins were placed before a makeshift altar.
Most of the victims' bodies were first taken to a morgue set up at a convention center on Madrid's eastern outskirts.
The Spanish Red Cross said it had 13 counseling units operating in the funeral parlors and the morgue. It has received more than 8,000 calls since Thursday.
