The train flew off the tracks as it reportedly tore at twice the
speed limit around a bend in northwestern Spain, killing at least 80
passengers and injuring more than 140 in the nation's deadliest rail
disaster since 1944. The footage shows the train rounding a bend, making a turn to the left underneath a road overpass. In
an instant, one car tumbled off the track, followed by the rest of the
locomotive, which seemed to come apart like a zipper being pulled.
Now,
a day after Spain suffered its deadliest rail disaster in decades -
which killed 80 people and maimed scores of others - one question
surpassed all others: Why was the train moving so fast?
Investigators
have opened a probe into possible failings by the 52-year-old driver
and the train's in-built speed-regulation systems. One of the drivers who became trapped in the cab after the accident
told railway officials by radio shortly after the crash that the train
had taken the bend at 190km/h an hour, unidentified investigation
sources told El Pais newspaper.
"I hope no one died because it will weigh on my conscience," he said, according to the paper's online edition.
One of the drivers had previously boasted of speeding on his Facebook page, according to reports.
Francisco Jose Garzon, 52, is reported to have posted a picture on the site of a train speedometer at 190km/h last year. According
to reports he also boasted about how fast he was going. The webpage
has disappeared after images appeared on Spanish TV and newspaper
websites. In the CCTV footage of the crash, the train's first
carriage behind the locomotive appears to come off the tracks first,
slamming the tail of the locomotive into a concrete wall. All the carriages can be seen starting to come off the tracks as the locomotive hurtles toward the camera position.
The security camera footage appears to stop at the moment that the engine crashes into it. The
speed limit on that section of track is 80km/h. An AP analysis of video
images suggests that the train may have been travelling at twice the
speed limit. Estimating the train's speed at the moment of impact
using the frame rate of the video and the estimated distance between
two pylons gives a range of 144-192 km/h. Another estimate calculated on
the basis of the typical distance between railroad ties gives a range
of 156-182 km/h.
Carriages piled into each other and overturned in
Wednesday's crash, smoke billowing from the wreckage of mangled steel
and smashed windows as bodies were laid out under blankets along the
tracks. Spain's government said two probes have been launched into
the cause of the crash, as the Interior Ministry raised the death toll
to 80, while 95 remained hospitalised, 36 in critical condition, among
them four children. State railway company Renfe said it was too
early to determine the cause but several media outlets and eyewitnesses
said the train carrying 218 passengers and four crew was speeding.
Francisco Otero, 39, who was inside his parents' home just beside the
section of the track where the accident happened, said he "heard a huge
bang".
"The first thing I saw was the body of a woman. I had
never seen a corpse before. But above all what caught my attention was
that there was a lot of silence, some smoke and a small fire," he said. "My
neighbours tried to pull out people who were trapped inside the
carriages with the help of pickaxes and sledgehammers and they
eventually got them out with a hand saw. It was unreal," he told AFP.
The
twisted, gutted shells of the white train carriages lay near a bend in
the track on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela. One was rammed
into a concrete siding, another snapped like a branch over the top of a
third. Bits of twisted metal from a fourth were scattered nearby.
The
images of the wrecked carriages stirred memories of the 2004 Madrid
train bombings by Islamic extremists which killed 191 people. The
town hall of Santiago de Compostela called off concerts and firework
displays that had been planned as part of the festivities in honour of
its patron saint. The eight carriages derailed on a stretch of high-speed track about
4km from the station in the city, the destination of the famous El
Camino de Santiago pilgrimage which has been followed by Christians
since the Middle Ages.
The train was the Alvia model which is
able to adapt between high-speed and normal tracks. It had left Madrid
and was heading for the coastal shipbuilding town of Ferrol as the
Galicia region was preparing celebrations in honour of its patron saint
James.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a native of Santiago
de Compostela, visited the scene of the accident on Thursday and
declared three days of mourning. King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe called off their public engagements out of respect for the victims. Rescue workers spent the night searching through smashed carriages alongside the tracks. As
dawn broke, cranes brought to the scene were used to lift the carriages
away from the tracks. Rescue workers collected passengers' scattered
luggage and loaded it into a truck next to the tracks.
source: news.com.au