Two Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students who were studying abroad were injured in a high-speed train collision in central Spain last week that killed at least 69 people and injured dozens more.
Matt Lazier, a Cal Poly spokesman, said in a statement that the students were receiving medical care and that the university was in touch with their families.
Cal Poly has not publicly named the students and did not provide details about their condition.
The Oct. 28 collision near Urda, south of Madrid, happened when a high-speed train slammed into another that had stopped on the tracks.
Most of the dead — 54 people — were Spanish nationals, Spanish authorities said. Four Americans and one Canadian were among those killed. Their identities had not been publicly released as of Monday. Authorities had identified one person each from France, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Portugal, Tunisia and the Czech Republic.
Authorities said they have three bodies still to identify and three people reported missing — two Australians and one from Japan.
Lazier said Cal Poly was communicating with U.S. Embassy officials in Spain and that the university was “reaching out to its students studying in Spain and across Europe to offer support.”
One of the students was Leah Silver-Fajardo, a 21-year-old junior who is hospitalized with a broken knee, broken pelvis, broken femur, several broken ribs, bruised lungs and extensive scrapes and burns, according to a GoFundMe fundraiser set up by her aunt, Rachel Chernin. No online fundraising effort could be found for the second student.
Silver-Fajardo had undergone surgery on her knee and was awaiting another to repair her pelvis, Chernin wrote. She had been moved out of intensive care and faces an extensive hospital stay and long-term rehabilitation.
“For our active young Leah, who loves running, hiking, soccer, and being active, the physical road ahead will be especially challenging,” Chernin wrote.
Silver-Fajardo, originally from Seattle, has been studying in the Italian city of Florence this semester and celebrated her birthday in that country last month “surrounded by her parents, sister, and new friends from her study-abroad program,” Chernin wrote.
Silver-Fajardo is majoring in neuropsychology, wrote her aunt, who added that she is “fascinated by the human brain” and “hopes to pursue work involving brain research, psychopharmacology, and behavioral health.”
After the crash, the U.S. Embassy contacted her parents to tell them Silver-Fajardo had been aboard one of the trains, and for a time, they did not know if she had survived, according to Chernin. Her friends from the study-abroad program “went from hospital to hospital searching for her until they finally found her and notified Leah’s parents,” she wrote.
On Sunday, Silver-Fajardo’s mother, Nicole, wrote on the GoFundMe page that her daughter was in “a lot of pain” but had started to smile and eat.
On Monday, she wrote that Silver-Fajardo was “completely immobilized and cannot lift her head much so we need to help with sips of water, eating, brushing her teeth, etc.”
The collision last week was the second major high-speed rail crash on the Madrid-Seville line this year. In January, more than two hours farther south along the route, a train derailed and struck another traveling in the opposite direction, killing 46 people. That collision remains under investigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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