Driver on work call before train crash

MADRID — The driver of the train that derailed and killed 79 people in Spain was on the phone and traveling at 95 mph — almost twice the speed limit — when the crash happened last week, according to a preliminary investigation released Tuesday.

The train had been going as fast as 119 mph shortly before the derailment, and the driver activated the brakes “seconds before the crash,” according to a written statement from the court in Santiago de Compostela, whose investigators gleaned the information from two “black box” data recorders recovered from the train.

The speed limit on the section of track was 50 mph.

The crash occurred near Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, and was the country’s worst rail accident in decades. Some 66 people injured in the crash are still hospitalized, 15 of them in critical condition.

The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time, the statement said. Garzon was provisionally charged Sunday with multiple counts of negligent homicide.

The driver received a call on his work phone in the cabin, not his personal cellphone, to tell him what approach to take toward his final destination. The Renfe employee on the telephone “appears to be a controller,” the statement said.

The statement on the preliminary findings did not indicate whether such a phone conversation is common between a driver of a moving train and a controller, and it did not say how long the call lasted. It did not name the Renfe official who called the driver, nor did it further describe what plan or document the driver was consulting.

The train was carrying 218 passengers when it hurtled off the tracks July 30. It slammed into a concrete wall, and some of the cars caught fire. The Spanish rail agency has said the brakes should have been applied 2.5 miles before the train hit the curve.