At least 77 killed in northern Spain rail crash
By The Financial Times
At least 77 people were killed and 131
injured when a train derailed on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela, the
Catholic pilgrimage city in northwestern Spain, in the country’s
deadliest railway crash in 40 years.
The cause of the accident some 4km south of
the city on Wednesday evening was unclear but pictures from the site showed
that at least six carriages derailed in the incident, with one ripped open and
resting on top of another. At least one caught fire.
Several bodies, some covered with blankets,
could be seen spread out alongside the wreckage, with smoke still billowing
from the carriages. Rescue teams worked through the night to reach passengers
trapped inside the train.
Local media reported officials saying that
the train, which was travelling from Madrid to Ferrol in the Galicia region was
exceeding the 80km/h speed limit as it went round a curve. One witness said the
force of the crash propelled one of the carriages more than six metres into the
air before it came to rest on top of another carriage.
Maria Pardo Rios, spokeswoman for the Galicia
region’s main court, said 73 people were found dead at the scene, and four died
in hospitals. At least 20 of the injured are in a critical condition.
Renfe, the Spanish railway operator, said the
train had 218 passengers on board. The derailment happened at 8.41pm on track
that was first used two years ago, the operator said. It is unclear how many
staff were on board but local media said both the conductors on the train
survived.
Renfe said both it and Adif, the state-owned
company with responsibility for the tracks, were co-operating with the judge in
charge of the investigation to determine the cause of the derailment.
Experts said that if it was an accident,
investigators would first focus on the speed of the train and why an automatic
safety system, known as “overspeed protection” did not engage and put the
brakes on to slow it down on the curve.
“It shouldn’t be possible for a train to go
around a curve like that at twice the normal speed as is being reported,” said
Roger Ford, technology editor of Modern Railways, a UK-based publication.
“There are lots of systems that automatically put on the brakes and they are
commonplace in most countries.”
He said there were reports that the train was
coming off a section of high-speed track, which is part of the country’s Ave
high-speed network but not yet completed in that region, and was switching back
on to the classic network.
“It’s possible that on that section of track
at the intersection of the high-speed and classic line and that close to the
station the overspeed protection did not extend to that stretch of the track,”
Mr Ford said but cautioned that he was speculating as he did not know the
layout of the network.
Mariano
Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister who was born in Santiago de
Compostela, expressed his “solidarity” with the victims of the crash.
His spokeswoman said he would visit the city
on Thursday, which is a public holiday in the region for its main annual
festival when thousands of Catholic pilgrims are expected to descend on the
city for ceremonies to honour Saint James. Officials in the city said all the
festival ceremonies had been cancelled.
“In the face of a tragedy such as just
happened in Santiago de Compostela on the eve of its big day, I can only
express my deepest sympathy as a Spaniard and a Galician,” Mr Rajoy said in a
statement.
Spain’s railway system is generally held in
high regard. Madrid has invested heavily in road and rail links and other
transport infrastructure over the past decade and Spain now boasts one of the
largest high-speed train networks in the world.
Most important cities are connected to Madrid
by high-speed rail, cutting travel times between the capital and cities such as
Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Málaga by several hours. Galicia is one of the
parts of the country not connected to the capital by high-speed train.
The last crash on a similar scale was in
1972, when scores were killed in a derailment in Andalucia, in the south of
Spain.
The Madrid train bombings of March 2004 left
191 people dead but this was a terrorist attack.
The crash occurred less than two weeks
after a French intercity train derailed 25km south of Paris, killing six people
and injuring a dozen. SNCF, the French train operator, blamed
a fault in a piece of metal connecting two rails for the accident.