Christian Delhasse was an experienced metro driver. When, on March 22, 2016 at 9:10 a.m., he left Maelbeek station and heard an explosion, he initially thought there was damage. “I always drive with the left window open. I just had to look and, in a fraction of a second, I had understood”, he explained, very moved before the assize court.
He sends a message by radio:Train X16, Maelbeek station. It farted. Send as many ambulances as possible”. The dispatching, following the procedure, repeats the message. No further communication is then possible. Christian Delhasse does not disassemble. He rescues his passengers. It was a plunge into hell.
He initially believed he might overcome the ordeal, even returning to his job the next day. But he cracked two years later. He is now retired. He has even lost his will to live, so guilt-ridden he is for not having been able to do more.
At the time of the explosion, the first metro car was already in the tunnel. Christian Delhasse leaves his driving position and enters the first car. “I asked if there were any injuries. There weren’t many responses.” He helps the passengers out through the last window that overlooks the platform, to direct them to the escalator.
Two people help him. He devotes himself to other cars. The second is “annihilated”. He opens the doors of the third with the exterior emergency buttons. He invites people to evacuate the station from behind the platform so as not to see the carnage.
Body fragments everywhere
He returns to the second car where the dead and wounded are. Visibility is limited due to smoke and dust. “It was a nightmare. I didn’t know where to start”. At the first door, he sees a man lying on the ground with a hole in his forehead. At the second gate there is a woman’s severed leg and pelvis. “I never got to see the rest,” testified Mr. Delhasse. He sees a body on fire. He puts it out with a fire extinguisher.
”The smell was indescribable.” Two people come out. A man asks her to help his wife. He does this before trying to free a man whose head is stuck by a bar. “I grabbed something stuck. It was a leg. Once you have it in your hands, you realize what it is, what do you do with it. Looking around. You have no choice, you drop it”, he told the audience.
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A woman, unable to move, asks for her baby. On the other platform, a policeman shouts that there may be a second bomb. This does not shake Christian Delhasse, who is looking for the baby and reports that there are still injured. The policeman spots the baby who is rescued by the firefighters when they arrive. The metro driver, before being evacuated, once more checks that no one is in the first car.
At this point in his story, which he has put down on paper and preferred to read, this tough-looking man is terribly moved: “Sixteen travelers stayed there. Each driver is responsible for the people he transports. I am sorry for the families of the victims”.
He goes back home. “I told my daughters and my wife: I’m fine. I never want to talk regarding it once more. Never. They have always respected my request”. He resumes work the next day. “If I had not resumed that day, I would never have resumed. My wife was seriously ill. We had to keep paying for everything.”
He worked until retirement, at the end of 2021, even if in 2018, he was overtaken by his demons: he might not forget the images. “Every day I rode, I felt like I was taking people to the slaughterhouse.”
A terrible guilt
”I thought I might forget but nothing helps. I no longer like the world in which I survive”, he confessed on Wednesday. Christian Delhasse no longer has a project, hates crowds, is always on the alert, on the alert. It is only with animals that he is confident. He can no longer take public transport, is sick of it when these children take them: “I have been living in confinement since 2016 […] Life has no more interest”.
The president of the court was compassionate, saying she understood that he blames himself. The driver confirmed it:These people entered my train with confidence”. “But you saved some”, retorted the president. “Yes, but some didn’t make it,” he replied. “But those whom you were able to save, you saved them”, insisted the president. “Not enough. It’s like that”, sighed Christian Delhasse.
