Another deadly train crash in Spain
A suburban train derailed when the protection wall fell on the rail due to heavy rain near the city of Barcelona, Spain, causing the death of the driver and the injury of approximately 20 people.
The crash in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia occurred just two days after a high-speed train collision and derailment near Adamuz in the southern province of Córdoba on Sunday, which killed 42 people and injured dozens more.
Emergency workers on Tuesday were still searching for more victims in the wreckage of Sunday’s deadly train crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles away, as the country began three days of mourning.
Emergency service officials said 20 ambulances along with 38 fire brigade units were sent to the area in Gelida, on the outskirts of Barcelona.
The commuter train crashed near the town of Gelida, about 35 minutes outside Barcelona.
Spain’s rail operator ADIF said the containment wall likely collapsed due to heavy rain that lashed the northeastern Spanish region this week.
The Barcelona crash came as emergency workers searched for more victims in the wreckage of a deadly train crash in southern Spain on Sunday and the country began three days of mourning for the victims.
Antonio Sanz, the regional health minister of Andalusia, where Sunday’s crash occurred, told Spanish media that the official death toll from the crash had increased after another body was found in a badly damaged car.
Health officials said 39 people remained in hospitals as of Tuesday morning, while 83 people were treated and discharged.
According to rail operator Adif, at 19.45 on Sunday, the rear of the train carrying 289 passengers from Malaga to the capital Madrid derailed and crashed into the train heading from Madrid to Huelva, another city to the south.
The front of the second train, carrying 184 people, took the brunt of the crash, and the first two carriages derailed and rolled down a 4-meter slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of meters from the crash site, according to Andalusia regional president Juanma Moreno.
Images taken by The Associated Press on Tuesday showed the remains of the second train’s first two cars separated from the rest of the train and lying next to the tracks. Train seats were thrown onto rocks that trapped them under the tracks.
Authorities continue to investigate the causes of the crash, which Puente described as “really strange” because it occurred on a straight line and neither train was speeding.
Puente said authorities had found a broken section of rail that could possibly be related to the source of the crash, but insisted it was just a hypothesis and it could take weeks to reach any conclusions.
“We now need to determine whether this was the cause or the consequence of the derailment,” Puente told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser.
Grande Marlaska said at a press conference that currently “all hypotheses are open.” He added that crash investigators will “analyze the rails at the point where the derailment started and examine the wheels” of the first train in a laboratory.
While the train that jumped off the rails belonged to the private company Iryo, the second train belonged to Spain’s public train company Renfe.
The accident shook a country that leads Europe in high-speed rail mileage and boasts a network considered state-of-the-art in rail transport.
“This is undoubtedly a hard blow and I need to work to ensure that this does not affect the reliability and strength of the network,” Puente told Spanish national radio RNE on Tuesday when asked about the damage to the rail system’s reputation. he said.
via Reuters
