Sam Adah, Abuja
Spain has begun three days of mourning to commemorate the 69 people who died in a high-speed rail collision as hospitals continue to treat dozens of injured passengers and relatives wait for news of their loved ones.
Two trains one from Spain’s state-owned Renfe and the other from the private rail company Iryo were heading from Madrid on Wednesday to the southern region of Andalucía on the same line when they collided just before 9am. After the Iryo train came to a halt, the other slammed into its rear, knocking several carriages off the track near the town of Urda in the central region of Castilla-La Mancha.
Officials said on Wednesday another 107 people had needed medical treatment in hospital, including 15 who were in a serious condition.
The deadly crash came 10 months after 46 people were killed and dozens more injured after two trains – again, one from Renfe and one from Iryo – collided on the same line near the town of Adamuz in Andalucía.
The disaster has raised fresh questions about safety on Spain’s large, modern high-speed rail network after the transport minister, Óscar Puente, said rear-end collisions such as Wednesday’s were “highly unlikely”, and suggested the accident could have been caused by human error under “inexplicable” circumstances.
He said the LZB signalling system, which automatically halts a train if the line ahead is occupied, had gone down at about 8.30am local time owing to a computer malfunction. As a result, an estimated six trains had been halted along a stretch of about 63km of track, Puente added.
The task of monitoring the rail lines then fell to a 24-hour command centre in Madrid. Minutes after the computer malfunction, the centre instructed at least two of the trains to continue as normal, despite the fact that there was still a “stop signal” in place.
The minister added
“It was the control centre, through its operators, that made the decision to resume traffic, under circumstances that, from our point of view, are inexplicable,” he said. “Clearly, it was a wrong decision.”
Emergency services combed through the wreckage through the night to find more victims, hoisting pieces of mangled metal with cranes. At daybreak, police once again launched drones to survey the crash site. One more body was found overnight, bringing the death toll to 69.
The first victim to be named included a 31-year-old Guardia civil officer, José Manuel Chacón.
The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, speaking during a visit to the emergency command centre in the city of Toledo, said the authorities were doing all they could to establish the cause of the crash and prevent another rail tragedy.
“I’d like to let all Spaniards know that every institution that is part of the state – from the smallest municipality to the government of Spain – is working day and night, not only to provide a response to the families of the victims, but also, of course, to uncover every last detail of this tragedy and to strengthen safety measures so that something like this never happens again.”
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