10 hours and 1 surgeon: The quiet hero of Indonesia’s train crash tragedy
JAKARTA: After a long shift and an evening out with his wife and two teenage daughters at a shopping mall in East Jakarta, Muhammad Iqbal El Mubarak was looking forward to going home and getting some well-deserved rest. But as his car exited the parking lot, the 41-year-old surgeon’s wife alerted him to social media posts about a train accident that had happened around an hour previously, some 30 minutes away at East Bekasi station. There seemed to be many casualties, she said. It was Monday, Apr 27, and the train would have been packed with commuters heading home from work, Iqbal thought. He pictured the station already descending into chaos with injured passengers, panicked families, overwhelmed paramedics and rescuers struggling to cope. Without much hesitation, he changed course. With his wife and daughters still in the car, he drove straight to the station, knowing emergency responders would need all the help they could get. “There were so many people but most were just standing there not knowing what to do,” said Iqbal. “I had to step in.” By the …
