Spanish tragedy
Driver probed after dozens killed in train crash near pilgrimage center
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA (Reuters) – Police put the driver of a Spanish train under investigation on Thursday after at least 78 people died when it hit a sharp bend at high speed, derailed and caught fire near the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela.
Dramatic video footage from a security camera outside the northwestern city showed the train, with 247 people on board, careering into a wall at the side of the track as carriages jackknifed and the engine overturned.
One local official described the aftermath of the crash, on the eve of one of Europe’s biggest Christian festivals in the ancient city, as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.
“We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I’d rather not tell you what I saw there,” Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year-old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters.
The train driver was under formal police investigation, a spokeswoman for Galicia’s Supreme Court told Reuters, without naming him. The train had two drivers, and one had been hospitalized, the Galicia government said.
It was not immediately clear which driver was under investigation or in the hospital. The train was operated by the state-owned company Renfe.
Newspaper accounts cited eyewitnesses as saying that one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: “I’ve derailed! What do I do?”
The El Pais newspaper said one of the drivers told the railway station by radio after being trapped in his cabin that the train had entered the bend at 190 kilometers per hour, twice the permitted speed.
“We’re only human! We’re only human!” he told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. “I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.”
Investigators were trying to urgently establish why the train was going so fast and why supposedly failsafe security devices to keep speed within permitted limits had not worked.
Bodies covered in blankets lay strewn around the train track next to overturned carriages after the impact as flames and smoke billowed from the wreckage and bloodied passengers staggered away.
Cranes were still pulling out mangled debris on Thursday morning, 12 hours after the crash. Emergency workers had already ended their search for survivors, the court spokeswoman said.
Firefighters called off a strike to help with the disaster, while hospital staff, many operating on reduced salaries because of spending cuts in recession-hit Spain, worked overtime to tend the injured.
The disaster happened at 8:41 p.m. on the eve of a major festival dedicated to St James, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, whose remains are said to rest in the city’s centuriesold cathedral.
The apostle’s shrine is the destination of the famous El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across the Pyrenees, which has been followed by Christians since the Middle Ages.
The city’s tourism board said all festivities, including the traditional High Mass at the cathedral, had been cancelled as the city went into mourning following the crash.
In total, 178 people were taken to hospitals after the crash, a regional government spokeswoman said. Of those, 95 were still being treated. Thirty-six of the injured, including four children, were in serious condition, she said.
US citizens were among the injured, the US Embassy said in a statement, and at least one British citizen was hurt, the British Embassy spokesman said. Several other nationalities were believed to be among the passengers.
One official source said speeding was a likely cause of the derailment, but the public works minister said it was too early to say exactly what had happened.
One of the train drivers was under sedation said Juan Jesus Garcia, the secretary general of the Renfe train drivers union, adding he hoped to visit him on Thursday. The driver had been operating trains in the area for three years, Garcia said.
Neighbors ran to the site to help emergency workers tend to the wounded. Ana Taboada, a 29-year-old hospital worker, was one of the first on the scene.
“When the dust lifted I saw corpses. I didn’t make it down to the track because I was helping the passengers coming up the embankment,” she told Reuters. “I saw a man trying to break a window with a stone to help those inside get out.”
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, capital of the Galicia region, visited the site and the main hospital on Thursday. He declared three days of official national mourning for the victims.
Passenger Ricardo Montesco told the Cadena Ser radio station that the train had approached the curve at high speed.
“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the railway cars to get out and we realized the train was burning.... I was in the second car and there was fire... I saw corpses,” he said.
Both Renfe and the stateowned Adif, which is in charge of the tracks, had opened an investigation into the cause of the derailment, Renfe said.
The official source said no statement would be made regarding the cause until the black boxes of the train were examined, but said it was most likely an accident.
Clinics in Santiago de Compostela were overwhelmed with people flocking to give blood, while hotels organized free rooms for relatives. Madrid sent forensic scientists and hospital staff to the scene on special flights.
The eight-car train was travelling from Madrid to Ferrol on the Galician coast when it derailed, Renfe said in a statement. The train had left Madrid on time and was travelling on schedule, a spokeswoman said.
The disaster stirred memories of a train bombing in Madrid in 2004, carried out by Islamist militants, that killed 191 people, although officials did not suspect an attack this time.
Wednesday’s derailment was one of the worst rail accidents in Europe in the past 25 years.