First-Hand Account of the Pile-Up on Trakia Motorway: Eyewitness Recounts the Tragedy on the Motorway

A witness to the pile-up on Trakia Motorway has told Bulgarian National Television (BNT) what he saw in the first few minutes after the accident. Radostin Minkov and his wife were travelling from Burgas to Sofia on business. They were unharmed but were confronted with horrifying scenes.

At around 6.30am, Radostin and his wife set off from Burgas for Sofia. Half an hour later, their journey turned into a nightmare.

Radostin Minkov, eyewitness: “About a kilometre after the junction for Shumen and Yambol, I started seeing people at the side of the road waving their arms or wearing high-visibility yellow jackets. At first, I simply wondered why someone was standing there and what they were doing in the road, leaning over the crash barrier. But when I saw a second and then a third person, I realised something was happening and began braking sharply. There was a lot of fog and visibility was very poor, but even so, I wasn't driving slowly. I was doing around 120 kilometres per hour... I got out of the car and we started lining up, car after car, across all three lanes – the hard shoulder and the two lanes. We lined up. There must have been 40 or 50 cars.”

He was confronted with a surreal scene.

Radostin Minkov, eyewitness: “It was a huge pile-up. The wreckage I saw consisted of enormous piles of metal and heavy goods vehicles. I realised that a tanker had overturned.”

His wife got out of the car and went to help the injured.

Radostin Minkov, eyewitness: “She went over to the people lying in the ditch and it turned out that one of them had a fractured skull, with part of his skull missing. She helped him, trying to stop the bleeding, and also helped get his legs out, from the ditch. Several you men were there, wet, freezing cold and shivering.”

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Radoslav Minkov, eyewitness: “My wife came back with both hands covered in blood from trying to stop the bleeding there... There was one man who couldn't move because his leg was twisted. They helped him get over the crash barrier so he could reach the ambulance.”

He says screams could be heard at the scene, while everyone waited for the ambulances to arrive. They also organised traffic to make it easier for the emergency vehicles to get through.

Radoslav Minkov, eyewitness: “There were cars on fire in both lanes. A lot of ambulances arrived, and a helicopter came too. It circled above us for some time but was unable to land.”

The couple spent an hour and a half on the motorway. However, they say the shock was so great that they can remember barely ten minutes of what happened.