A university student who lost her leg after she was caught up in the Alton Towers rollercoaster crash has said it was a relief to have her limb amputated following six rounds of agonising surgery.
Victoria Balch, 20, was injured in June when the £18m Smiler ride collided with a stationary test car at 20mph, leaving her leg “looking like a piece of meat from the butchers”. Four other people were also seriously injured.
Balch, from Leyland, Lancashire, told BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme: “After the third operation it was looking good – I thought I might be able to walk again. But the bad news came before my seventh operation, by which time I was exhausted. I had spent so much time asleep.”
After the amputation, she said, “I looked down, I looked at my leg, it was a relief. It was a relief not to have it there.”
She told the programme that she queued for 30 minutes before getting on the ride, and had “a really bad feeling” when she saw the empty carriage ahead of her before crashing.
“I remember it going into my knees and it hurt,” she said. “The pain was indescribable. It hurt so much, as I’m talking about it I can still feel how it did, as it crashed into my legs.”
She said she lost consciousness as the carriage rolled back and forth, and was left dangling at a 45-degree angle for four hours before a platform was built to help get her down.
The University of Derby student has been learning to walk again at the specialist mobility rehabilitation centre in Preston. She has progressed from a wheelchair to crutches and has recently been provided with a prosthetic leg.
Merlin Entertainment, which owns Alton Towers, has said the injured parties will receive compensation.
