Collapses; 23 dead
feared he was dead. “He is down there now,” he told journalists pointing toward the site.
Gisela Rioja Castro, 43, was looking for her husband, 42year-old Miguel Ángel Espinoza. She said that her husband always takes that train after finishing work at a store, but he never got home and had stopped answering his phone. When she heard what happened, she immediately feared the worst but has got no information from the authorities.
“Nobody knows anything,” she said.
The collapse occurred on the newest of the Mexico City subway’s lines, Line 12, which stretches far into the city’s south side. Like many of the city’s dozen subway lines, it runs underground through more central areas of the city of nine million, but then runs on elevated concrete structures on the city’s outskirts.
Allegations about poor design and construction on the subway line emerged soon after Ebrard left office as mayor. Ebrard leads Mexico’s efforts to obtain coronavirus vaccines and has been considered a potential presidential candidate in 2024 elections. The line had to be partly closed in 2013 so tracks could be repaired.
Ebrard wrote on
“What happened today on the Metro is a terrible tragedy.”
“Of course, the causes should be investigated and those responsible should be identified,” he wrote. “I repeat that I am entirely at the disposition of authorities to contribute in whatever way is necessary.”
Ebrard, yesterday, appeared at President Andrés Manuel
Twitter:
López Obrador’s daily news conference, saying, “I share the indignation that exists.”
It was not clear whether a 7.1-magnitude earthquake in 2017 could have affected the subway line. There were reports that cracks had appeared in the base of at least one of the columns that support the elevated track following that quake.
The line was closed yesterday and hundreds of buses were called in.