Barcelona Commuter Train Crashes Just Days After Another Deadly Collision

ADAMUZ, Spain (AP) – A commuter train crashed in Barcelona on Tuesday after a retaining wall fell on the tracks, Spanish emergency services said, just two days after a separate deadly train collision in southern Spain that killed at least 42 people and injured dozens more.

The Barcelona crash occurred as emergency workers searched Sunday’s wreckage for more victims. fatal train accident In southern Spain, the country began three days of mourning for the victims.

Regional emergency services said 15 people were injured in Tuesday’s crash, three of them seriously. The other five were in less serious condition.

The commuter train crashed near the town of Gelida, about 35 minutes outside Barcelona.

Spain’s railway operator ADIF said the containment wall probably collapsed due to heavy rains that ravaged Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia this week.

Antonio Sanz, the regional health minister of Andalusia, where Sunday’s accident occurred, told the Spanish media that the official death toll was accident He was on his feet after another body was found in a badly damaged car.

Emerged in the midst of tragedy 6 year old girl saved While there were no major injuries in the accident, his parents, brother and cousin lost their lives.

Fidel Sáez lost his mother in the wreckage, but his two children, his brother and a nephew survived. Their trip to the capital to watch the musical “The Lion King” turned into a nightmare on the way home.

“My brother was taken off the ventilator. He told me it was a miracle he survived. He had to throw the children out the window,” Sáez told national TV broadcaster TVE. “He also asked me to tell the story of our mother, how good she was.”

Health officials said 39 people remained in hospitals as of Tuesday morning, while 83 people were treated and discharged.

Among them was Emil Johnson, a Swedish citizen living in Malaga who went to Madrid to renew his passport.

“It was probably two, three seconds. And everything was broken,” Jonsson, who was sitting in a wheelchair and wearing part of a hospital gown because of bruises on his ribs and back, told reporters. “When we had the accident, I didn’t know who was alive and who was dead.”

There was a market accident According to rail operator Adif, at 19.45, 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 collision, which caused the first two carriages to derail and fall onto a 4-meter (13-foot) 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.

Further down the tracks, Civil Guard officers inspected the interior of the first train with dogs as passengers’ belongings lay strewn on the ground, according to video distributed by authorities. The last carriage was lying on its side on the rails, and the second to last carriage was leaning to one side with all its windows broken.

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.

At the moment “all hypotheses are open”, Grande Marlaska said at a press conference. He added that accident 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.

Iryo said on Monday that its train was produced in 2022 and passed a safety inspection on January 15.

Puente and Renfe president Álvaro Fernández said both trains were traveling below the 250 kph (155 mph) speed limit and that “human error can be ruled out.”

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 have to work to ensure that it 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.

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the crash site and greeted emergency workers and some local residents who helped in the early stages of the rescue effort. They then went to the hospital in Cordoba, where most of the injured were being treated.

Letizia told reporters after the visit, “We are all responsible for not looking away while the debris of a disaster is being cleared.”

Spain’s Civil Guard is collecting DNA samples from family members who fear their loved ones may be among the unidentified dead.

High-speed trains resumed service from Madrid on Tuesday to Seville and Malaga, the largest cities in Andalusia, Spain’s most populous region, but passengers had to travel part of the journey on buses provided by the rail service. Minister Puente said that normal train services will not resume until the beginning of February.

Spanish airline Iberia added more flights to southern cities through Sunday to help stranded passengers. Some bus companies have also strengthened their services in the south.

Wilson reported from Barcelona, ​​Spain. Photographer Manu Sánchez from Adamuz and AP journalist Teresa Medrano from Madrid contributed.