Train crash in Spain blamed on high speed
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, SPAIN — A Spanish train that hurtled off the rails and smashed into a security wall as it rounded a bend was going so fast that cars tumbled off the tracks like dominoes, killing 80 people and maiming dozens more, according to eyewitness accounts and video footage obtained Thursday.
An Associated Press analysis of video images suggests the train may have been travelling at twice the speed limit, or more, along that curved stretch of track. The unanswered question is: Why?
Spain’s government said two probes have been launched into the train’s derailment Wednesday night on its approach to this Christian festival city in northwest Spain, where planned celebrations in honour of St. James gave way to a living nightmare.
The regional government in Galicia confirmed that police planned to question the 52-year-old train driver, in Santiago de Compostela’s main hospital with unspecified injuries, as both a witness and as a possible suspect, but cautioned that possible faults in safety equipment were also being investigated.
The Interior Ministry raised the death toll to 80 in what was Spain’s deadliest train wreck in four decades. The Galician government said 94 others remained hospitalized in six regional hospitals, 31 of them — including four children — in critical condition.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a native of Santiago de Compostela, toured the crash scene alongside rescue workers and went to a nearby hospital to visit those wounded and their families. In the evening Spain’s head of state, King Carlos and Queen Sofia went to the same hospital, dressed in black.
“For a native of Santiago, like me, this is the saddest day,” said Rajoy, who declared Spain would observe a three-day period of mourning. He said judicial authorities and the Public Works Ministry had launched parallel investigations into what caused the crash.
Eyewitness accounts backed by security-camera footage of the moment of disaster suggested that the eight-car train was going too fast as it tried to turn left underneath a road bridge.
The train company Renfe said 218 passengers and five crew members were on board. Spanish officials said the speed limit on that section of track is 80 km/h.
An Associated Press estimate of the train’s speed at the moment of impact using the time stamp of the video and the estimated distance between two pylons gives a range of 144-192 km/h. Another estimate calculated on the basis of the typical distance between railroad ties gives a range of 156-182 km/h.
After impact, witnesses said a fire engulfed passengers trapped in at least one car, most likely driven by ruptured tanks of diesel fuel carried in the forward engines.
“I saw the train coming out of the bend at great speed and then there was a big noise,” said one eyewitness who lives beside the train line, Consuelo Domingues.
“Then everybody tried to get out of the train.”
Santiago officials had been preparing for the city’s internationally celebrated Catholic festival Thursday but cancelled it and took control of the city’s main indoor sports arena to use as a makeshift morgue. There, relatives of the dead could be seen sobbing and embracing each other.
The Interior Ministry, responsible for law and order, ruled out terrorism as a cause.
It was Spain’s deadliest train accident since 1972, when a train collided with a bus in southwest Spain, killing 86 people and injuring 112.
It was the world’s third major rail accident this month.
On July 12, six people were killed and nearly 200 were injured when four cars of a passenger train derailed south of Paris.
On July 6, 72 cars carrying crude oil derailed in Lac-Megantic, Que., setting off explosions and fires that killed 47 people.
Catholic pilgrims converge on Santiago de Compostela annually to celebrate a festival honouring St. James, a disciple of Jesus whose remains are said to rest in a shrine. The city is the main gathering point for those who reach the end of the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that has drawn Christians since the Middle Ages.