and the other southwards. On the road to the north, the injured received adequate medical care, once they had reached either the hospitals at Amposta or at Tortosa. At this stage, the final destination of 58 severely burned patients was the Francisco Franco Hospital in Barcelona. Eighty-two severely burned patients were taken south to the La Fe Hospital in Valencia. In most cases no medical steps of any importance were taken during the journey. Several of the injured developed severe shock on the journey and had no measurable blood pressure on arrival. Many of the patients had burns covering more than 90% of their bodies, and most of them died during the following days. Contributing to the high mortality figure was the inappropriate medical care given en route to the hospital. In the week following the disaster, the patients from France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands were evacuated to their own countries. Victims More than 300 people were wounded, some of them severely. Initially 217 people died directly from the explosion (four Spaniards including the driver, all the others were foreigner nationals) while the total number of people who died in the following months as a result of their injuries rose to at least 270. The official figure for the number of victims is 215. Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. Identification was difficult, as most of them were wearing only swimming suits, and the building where their documents were stored was destroyed in the explosion. There was no DNA test available at that time. As a result of the work done by the forensic teams from the tourists' home countries, all victims were eventually identified. Seven of the victims remained unidentified until some time later, and they were interred at the cemetery of Tortosa, Tarragona. The bodies of a French family, consisting of a couple and their two children, were returned to France some years later, after compensation had been settled. The bodies of another family of three originating from Colombia were never sent home, and they remain the only foreigners to be interred at the cemetery of Tortosa along with local victims. Inquiry Following the accident, Cisternas Reunidas accepted responsibility for the disaster, but denied any order or prohibition to the drivers to use the motorway instead of the national road, claiming that it was the driver who chose which road to take. Later, some workers