High Speed Train De-Rails in Spain 80 dead

[Jos]

More than 140 were hurt, 36 seriously, after all eight carriages of the Madrid to Ferrol train came off the tracks near Santiago de Compostela.

Media reports say the train may have been travelling at more than twice the speed limit around a curve.

BBC News - Spain train crash: Galicia derailment kills 78

Condolences to the Families

 

[rightwinger]

In watching the video, the conductor was going way too fast for that turn

Criminal

 

[Jos]

Too early to know, but to me it looked like the front engine braked, and the rest of the Train didn't the rear engine was pushing

 

[martybegan]

In watching the video, the conductor was going way too fast for that turn

Criminal

Yep, going to fast, and one correction, the driver is an engineer, not a conductor.

 

[AceRothstein]

Mercy, that video.

 

[Jos]

Vídeo: Así descarriló el tren de Santiago | Vídeos | EL PAÍS

 

[High_Gravity]

Thats terrible.

 

[depotoo]

heard they said the train was going twice the speed is was supposed to be. Makes one wonder if something happened to the engineer before the crash.

 

[Mad Scientist]

heard they said the train was going twice the speed is was supposed to be. Makes one wonder if something happened to the engineer before the crash.

The Engineer has already said he was doing 120.

 

[depotoo]

heard they said the train was going twice the speed is was supposed to be. Makes one wonder if something happened to the engineer before the crash.

The Engineer has already said he was doing 120.

so he survived? Wow.

 

[Jos]

He engaged the emergency brake, but it seems only the front engine braked, the rest of the train was shunted off the track by the rear locomotive, easy route= blame the driver

 

[Yurt]

In watching the video, the conductor was going way too fast for that turn

Criminal

how can you tell that from the video? i couldn't tell that at all.

 

[R.C. Christian]

Wow, that sucks. I won't be riding any high speed trains again, not that we have them here anyway.

 

[waltky]

Engineer in custody...

Driver in Custody After 80 Killed in Spain Train Crash
July 25, 2013 > Police take train's driver into custody in hospital after dramatic accident which official source says was caused by excessive speed

Police took the driver of a Spanish train into custody in hospital on Thursday after at least 80 people died when it derailed and caught fire in a dramatic accident which an official source said was caused by excessive speed. The eight-car high velocity train came off the tracks just outside the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain on Wednesday night. It was one of Europe's worst rail disasters. The source had knowledge of the official investigation into a crash which brought misery to Santiago on Thursday, the day when it should have celebrated one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals. Authorities canceled festivities as the city went into mourning.

The Galicia region supreme court said in a statement that the judge investigating the accident had ordered police to put the driver in custody and take a statement from him. He was under formal investigation, the court said. Dramatic video footage from a security camera showed the train, with 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned. One local official described the aftermath of the crash as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.

An overhead view of the wreckage of a train crash is seen near Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, in this still image from video, July 25, 2013.

The impact was so huge one car flew several meters into the air and landed on the other side of the high concrete barrier. Some 94 people were injured, of whom 35 were in a serious condition, including four children, the deputy head of the regional government said. “We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there,” Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year-old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters. The train had two drivers, the Galicia government said, but it was not immediately clear which one was in hospital and under investigation.

Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: “I've derailed! What do I do?”. The 52-year-old had been a train driver for 30 years, a Renfe spokeswoman said. Many newspapers published excerpts from his Facebook account where he was reported to have boasted of driving trains at high speed. The page was taken offline on Thursday and the reports could not be verified.

Driver in Custody After 80 Killed in Spain Train Crash

 

[waltky]

Spain Train Driver Held on Suspicion of Homicide...

Police accuse Spain train crash driver of 'reckless homicide,' minister says
Sat July 27, 2013 > FORMAL CHARGES OF RECKLESS HOMICIDE COULD FOLLOW SOON

Police in Spain have accused the driver of a train that derailed in northwestern Spain, killing at least 78 people, of "reckless homicide," the country's interior minister said Saturday. The judge has until Sunday evening local time to decide whether to press formal charges against Jose Francisco Garzon, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters in Santiago de Compostela. The driver, who spent the past two days under detention in hospital, guarded by police, is now at the police headquarters, he said. The data recorders from the train are still with police, he added. Separately, a spokesman for the Galician regional Supreme Court told CNN Saturday morning that the judge had not yet questioned Garzon.

Questions have focused on the speed at which the train was traveling as it entered a curve in the track near Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday evening. The crash on the outskirts of the city, which is popular with tourists and Christian pilgrims and was preparing to celebrate a saint's day Thursday, shocked the Galician region and the nation. Fernandez Diaz told reporters earlier Saturday there are "rational indications" that the accident is the fault of the driver. Pressed on what those indications are, he declined to give more details. The driver is not scheduled to appear in court Saturday. But a statement from a regional court said, "The intention, if it is possible, is that he makes an appearance in the courts."

Galicia regional police chief Jaime Iglesias told reporters Friday that the driver was under police detention because of "a crime. Asked what crime, he responded: "Well ... in connection to the accident, in connection with his recklessness, in connection with causing the accident." The crumpled wreckage of the eight train cars sent careering onto their sides when the train derailed has now been removed from the tracks, but the grim task of identifying the dead continues. Maria Pardo Rios, a spokeswoman for the Galicia regional supreme court, told CNN late Friday that 75 victims had been identified from at least 78 people killed. At least 63 of the dead are Spanish, she said. Also among them is one U.S. citizen, Ana-Maria Cordoba from Arlington, Virginia, and a number of people from Europe and Latin America.

As they are identified, most of the bodies are being returned to their grieving families, a statement from the regional justice department said. DNA testing is to be done on some remains to establish their identity and to how many people they belong, it said. Police forensic experts said at a news conference Saturday that there are 37 body parts that must still be tested to see whether they belong to bodies that have already been identified, or to others not yet known. About 80 people who were injured in the crash remained in hospital Saturday, about a third of them still listed in critical condition. At least five U.S. citizens were injured, said State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf Local newspaper La Voz de Galicia said that a funeral service for the victims would be held on Monday evening in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.

Going too fast?

 

[Vikrant]

The problem was the driver was treating it as a high speed rail even though it was not.

 

[Political Junky]

Will the driver be convicted?

 

[TheSeventhTiger]

didn't we have similar (but not as bad) high speed train crashes cause the drivers were texting? In DC and Boston?