Train wrecks & plane crashes

[waltky]

Train wreck in far southwest Louisville, Ky injures 3 tanker recovery workers...

Hazmat team at scene of train derailment expected to pull out within four hours
29 Oct.`12 - The hazmat team working at the scene of the train derailment is expected to pull out within four hours, a fire official said.

When the hazmat team pulls out, the situation will no longer be considered an emergency, said Rick Harrison, the assistant chief for the Buechel Fire Protection District. At that point, the site will be turned over to R.J. Corman and CSX contractors who will handle the rest of the clean up, Harrison said.

People evacuated from 12 homes along Abbotts Beach Road will not be allowed to return home, but people living in other homes that were evacuated will be allowed to return, he said. But the returning evacuees will not be allowed to run any heating systems, which could be a problem because of the cold weather expected, he said. An overnight shelter has been set up at the Nichols Fire Department, Station 3, at 130 Merkle Lane, in Bullitt County, Harrison said.

People who have questions about the shelters or who need other help can call the American Red Cross at 561-3642. After the hazmat team pulls out, firefighters from the Pleasure Ridge Park fire department will remain at the accident site as a precaution, Harrison said.

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Evacuation ordered for residents within 1.2 miles of train derailment
31 Oct.`12 - Emergency officials confirm that there are multiple injuries after chemicals ignited at the train derailment site at Katherine Station Road and Dixie Highway.

One of the workers is reported in critical condition, one is in serious condition and one is in fair condition, all suffering from burns. Two were taken by ambulance and one by helicopter to University Hospital. Two other workers refused treatment. A Code Red has been issued for the area. Residents within 1.2 miles of the scene were told to evacuate.

Residents within a five-mile radius are advised to stay inside their homes ,close all doors and windows and turn off any system that pulls in outside air. As a precaution, it is advised that residents seal any cracks where outside air can get in. Workers were reportedly using a blow torch to prep for stabilization, and it ignited residual butadiene in the air. None of the tank cars exploded.

Classes at West Point Independent School are canceled for the rest of the week. Due to the shelter in place advisory, Watson Lane Elementary dismissed at 1:15 p.m. Children are being transported to Valley High School. After-school activities are canceled for Frost Middle School. WLKY.com will continue to update as more information becomes available.

More Evacuation ordered for residents within 1.2 miles of train derailment - Local News - Louisville, KY | NBC News

 

[whitehall]

Let me get this straight, "when the haz-mat team pulls out the situation will no longer be considered an emergency" but people will not be able to return to their homes. Maybe the ass't chief has a different definition for the word "emergency".

 

[Mr. H.]

Used in the production of synthetic rubber.

 

[waltky]

Spilt fuel ignited a fire after the bridge was hit...

Missouri rail crash brings down US road bridge
25 May 2013 - Two goods trains have collided in the US state of Missouri, bringing down a road bridge and leaving seven people injured.

The crash, in Scott County, prompted one of the trains to derail, hitting a pillar propping up Highway M, reports said. Two cars were on the bridge when it collapsed. Five passengers inside the cars were hurt and taken to hospital. Two people in one of the goods trains were also injured.

The collision happened at 02:30 (07:30 GMT) near Chaffee in south-east Missouri. Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter told St Louis TV station KMOV that a Union Pacific train had just gone through an intersection when it ploughed into a Burlington Northern train.

Several carriages derailed and as one of the trains hit the bridge, spilt fuel ignited a fire. None of the injured was said to be in a serious condition. A week ago, more than 60 people were injured when two commuter trains collided during the rush hour in Connecticut.

BBC News - Missouri rail crash brings down US road bridge

 

[longknife]

It's all Bush's fault!!!

 

[martybegan]

Now a media related question. Would we have even heard of the train crash, which took out a roadway bridge, if the bridge in Seattle had not fallen down due to the truck strike on its lattice structure?

 

[waltky]

Train derailment explodes in Baltimore...

Train derails in Maryland, explosion reported
28 May`13 — A cargo train derailed Tuesday in a Baltimore suburb and an explosion could be heard for miles, collapsing nearby buildings and setting them on fire, officials and witnesses said.

The train derailed at about 2 p.m. in White Marsh, about 10 miles northeast of Baltimore and a fire department spokeswoman said she did not know if there were any injuries. Hazmat teams were on the scene, are responding, Baltimore County Police and Fire said in a series of tweets.

Dale Walston said he lives about a half-mile away from the blast site and that the smell of chemicals is very strong. "It shook my house pretty violently and knocked things off the shelves," he said in an email to The Associated Press. Photos and video on TV stations showed a large plume of smoke rising from the area. At least three rail cars could be seen off the tracks. Overhead news shots show several blackened buildings and fires burning.

A worker at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, Tawan Rai, reached by The Associated Press by phone, said he saw a fire and flames by the railroad tracks at first, then felt a thundering blast that sent smoke pouring into the sky. "The whole building shook and there was just dust everywhere," said Rai, adding no windows broke but he was surprised by the intensity of the blast. "I went outside and people were rushing there, the police officers, fire trucks."

He also said he saw some ambulances arrive but didn't see anyone injured. He also said police had apparently stopped traffic on nearby Pulaski Highway not far from the tracks and he no longer had any customers at his donut shop. John Kane, treasurer of Atlantic Tire on nearby Pulaski Highway, said the explosion blew out two large showcase windows and light fixtures in his shop.

Train derails in Maryland, explosion reported

 

[waltky]

Mebbe it was ammonium nitrate?...

CSX: Md. train explosion caused by chemical cargo
May 29, 2013 — Train operator CSX Transportation on Wednesday pointed to a hazardous chemical in a rail car as the source of an explosion on a derailed train near Baltimore that sparked a fire, rattled homes and damaged buildings. A company spokesman said officials still weren't sure what caused the sodium chlorate to explode in the first place, but it ignited another chemical in a second car.

Authorities are continuing to look into the cause of Tuesday's incident. Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators were examining evidence on the scene and reviewing train video that might show the collision with a garbage truck that set off the incident. But he said they had not reached any conclusions. Sumwalt said at a news conference Wednesday that the freight train was traveling 49 mph and that the engineer blew a whistle three times before it collided with the truck.

The train hit the right rear axle of the truck as it was crossing the tracks around 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sumwalt said. He added that the locomotive applied its emergency brakes and traveled nearly a mile before coming to a stop. Fifteen cars derailed, including three of the four cars that were carrying hazardous materials. The chemical that exploded was sodium chlorate, which is highly volatile. Sumwalt said the explosion, which damaged nearby buildings and shook homes miles away, occurred 5 minutes and 23 seconds after the initial collision. The sodium chlorate was in powder form and was being hauled in a covered hopper car. Another chemical burned for nearly 10 hours after the crash.

CSX spokesman Gary Sease said the sodium chlorate in a derailed car near the front of the train exploded, igniting terephthalic acid in another derailed car. Sodium chlorate is used mainly as a bleaching agent in paper production. Oklahoma State University chemist Nick Materer said it could make for a potentially explosive mixture when combined with an incompatible substance such as spilled fuel. Another chemist, Darlene Lyudmirskiy, of Spectrum Chemical Manufacturing Corp. in Gardena, Calif., said such a mixture would be unstable and wouldn't need even a spark to cause a reaction. "If it's not compatible, anything could set it off," she said.

The railroad said in a news release Wednesday that it continues to work with state and federal environmental officials to "clean up products released in the derailment." The company said it is conducting air, water and soil sampling and sharing that information with officials. On Wednesday afternoon, workers were using heavy cranes to move the damaged rail cars, and an excavator was picking up broken pieces of track. The mangled truck lay on its side on the side of the railroad tracks, its contents littering the ground. Next to the track, the corrugated metal walls of a warehouse were bent and warped. Among the buildings that sustained the most damage was a training facility for a plumbers and steamfitters union a few hundred yards away from the explosion site. Only a handful of employees were in the building at the time of the blast, and all but one rushed outside to see what had happened. They heard the crash first, followed by the derailment, then saw a plume of smoke.

More CSX: Md. train explosion caused by chemical cargo | CNS News

 

[longknife]

Again, it's all Bush's fault for not spending trillions to rebuild all the railroad tracks!

 

[waltky]

Train wreck in Spain kills 78...

At least 78 killed, 131 injured, in Spain train disaster
25 July`13 - A train derailed outside the ancient northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday night, on the eve of a major religious festival, killing at least 78 people and injuring up to 131 in one of Europe's worst rail disasters.

In what one local official described as a scene from hell, bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage after the disaster. Firefighters clambered desperately over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows, while ambulances and fire engines surrounded the scene. Cranes were still pulling out mangled debris on Thursday morning, 12 hours after the crash. One official source said speeding was a likely cause of the derailment, which occurred as the train reached a curve in the track, but the public works minister said it was too early to draw conclusions on what had happened.

El Pais newspaper cited sources close to the investigation as saying the train was travelling at over twice the speed limit on a sharp curve and Santiago's mayor said the train was probably going too fast. "We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped getting 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 Santiago de Compostela train operated by state rail company Renfe, which had 247 people on board, derailed as the city prepared for the renowned festival of Saint James, when thousands of Christian pilgrims from across the world pack the streets. The city's tourism board said all festivities, including the traditional High Mass at the centuries-old cathedral, had been cancelled as the city went into mourning following the crash.

Passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station the train approached the curve at high speed, twisted and wagons piled up one on top of the other. "A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning. ... I was in the second wagon and there was fire. ... I saw corpses," he said. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia region, visited the site on Thursday morning. He was due to go to the main hospital later in the day and hold an emergency meeting with local authorities. "In the face of a tragedy such as just happened in Santiago de Compostela on the eve of its big day, I can only express my deepest sympathy as a Spaniard and a Galician," he said in a written statement late on Wednesday.

INVESTIGATION

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Relatives sob outside morgue made for Spain crash
July 25, 2013 — Relatives of victims from a train crash in northwestern Spain sobbed and hugged each other Friday near a makeshift morgue in a sports arena for the victims as the death toll rose to 78 and investigators tried to determine the cause.

The train jumped the tracks and at least one passenger told a radio station that it appeared to be going very fast as it went into a pronounced curve while approaching the station in this Catholic shrine city on the eve of a major religious festival. Seventy-three people were found dead at the scene of the accident and four died in hospitals, said Maria Pardo Rios, spokeswoman for the Galicia region's main court. Another person also died, bringing the toll to 78, but no information was immediately available on where, said an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of ministry policy. At least 141 people were injured — some critically — after the eight-carriage train carrying 218 passengers derailed about an hour before sunset Wednesday night.

Authorities did not identify any possible accident causes, but a spokeswoman with Spain's Interior Ministry said Thursday that the possibility that the derailment was caused by a terrorist attack had been ruled out. She also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ministry policy. It was Spain's deadliest train accident since 1972, when a train collided with a bus in southwestern Spain, killing 86 people and injuring 112. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, toured the crash scene Thursday with rescue workers and then went to a hospital to visit injured passengers.

A grim Rajoy told reporters that "for a native of Santiago, like me, this is the saddest day." He said investigations had been launched by judicial authorities and the Public Works Ministry to determine the cause as quickly as possible but declined to take questions from reporters. Officials in the city canceled ceremonies for its annual religious festival that attracts tens of thousands of Christians from around the world. "July 24 will no longer be the eve of a day of celebration but rather one commemorating one of the saddest days in the history of Galicia," said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of the region of Galicia where Santiago de Compostela is the capital.

Rescue workers spent the night searching through smashed cars alongside the tracks, and Pardo said it was possible that the death toll could go higher. Many of the dead were taken to a makeshift morgue set up in the city's largest indoor sports arena, where police and court officials were identifying the bodies. Relatives of victims sobbed and hugged each other outside at a nearby information point for families seeking news about their missing loved ones.

- See more at: Relatives sob outside morgue made for Spain crash | CNS News

 

[longknife]

Truly sad.

My question ... mechanical failure? Human error? Or terrorist attacks?

 

[waltky]

Spanish Train Driver Bragged About Speed...

Spanish Train Inquiry Focuses on Driver With a Taste for Speed
July 25, 2013 > FRANCISCO GARZÓN AMO IMAGINED FLYING PAST AUTHORITIES: REPORT

The train driver did little to hide his taste for speed. He posted a photograph of a locomotive speedometer needle stuck at 200 kilometers, or about 125 miles, per hour on Facebook last year, boasting that the reading “has not been tampered with” and openly relishing the idea of racing past the authorities. “Imagine what a rush it would be traveling alongside the Civil Guard, and passing them so that their speed traps go off,” he wrote, in all capitals. “Hehe, that would be quite a fine for Renfe, hehe,” referring to his employer, the Spanish rail company.

Now that train driver, Francisco José Garzón Amo, a veteran with more than three decades of experience, is under investigation by a judge in connection with one of Europe’s worst rail accidents in recent years. In a chilling video from a security camera, the passenger train he was driving rounded a curve at high speed on Wednesday night, tumbling violently off the track, slamming against a curved wall and piling up in a twisted wreck. Eighty people were killed. On Thursday, Spanish news media reported that the driver had said the train’s speed had been about 120 miles per hour, more than double the limit in the stretch of track where the train derailed. On the day of the wreck, he took over from another driver just 60 miles before the crash, according to Spanish news reports.

Video footage showed the moment when the train went off the track

The train was almost full, carrying more than 200 passengers and merrymakers returning to the region for a special holiday on Thursday. July 25 is the feast day for St. James the Apostle, the patron saint of Spain, who for centuries has inspired pilgrims to walk El Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James. The pilgrimage has had a burst of popularity in recent years, drawing walkers from around the world. After the crash, the city of Santiago de Compostela canceled its extensive celebration and the authorities urged people to donate blood. Thousands made a very different kind of pilgrimage to the site of the disaster, watching as rescuers used cranes and trucks to hoist the engines of the wrecked train. All — children, teenagers and older people — stood in funereal silence.

Nearby, in a building where an information center had been set up, police officers kept the victims’ families from the public eye. Some walked around the building in tears, hugging and comforting one another, while others grew frustrated waiting to see their loved ones. “Now, at 9:30 p.m., is when they allowed us to go and see our family member,” said María, a relative of a victim who did not want her full name used. “Twenty-four hours waiting, in these conditions. That’s too much.” Most high-speed lines that are part of the European rail traffic system are covered by a GPS-based surveillance network that constantly monitors trains’ speed and automatically brakes them at speed limits.

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Spain mourns train crash victims as it hunts for clues
26 July 2013 > Spain is in mourning over the deaths of 78 people in a high-speed train crash on Wednesday.

More than 90 passengers out of 218 on board the train that crashed outside Santiago de Compostela remain in hospital, including some 30 critical. The injured train driver has been detained and faces charges of "recklessness", police say. There are reports that the train was travelling at more than double the speed limit at the time of the crash. Spain has declared three days of national mourning over the crash - one of its worst ever rail disasters.

Recovery work has been continuing at the site of one of Spain's deadliest rail disasters of the last decades.

On Friday, police said 78 people had been confirmed dead - down from 80 announced earlier. They said the difference arose because human remains had been wrongly identified in the initial stages. At least 130 people were taken to hospital after the accident, and 95 are still being treated. The 32 seriously injured include children. People from several nationalities are among the wounded, including five Americans and one Briton. One American was among the dead.

'Too fast'

The Secretary of State for Transport, Rafael Catala, has said in a radio broadcast that early indications suggested the train had been going too fast. The Madrid to Ferrol train's data recording "black box" is now with the judge in charge of the investigation. The driver under investigation, who was slightly injured in the crash and is under guard in hospital, has been named by Spanish media as Francisco Jose Garzon Amo. It is unclear whether anyone else is subject to investigation. The train's carriages have been removed from the track by cranes and sent for analysis.

The president of railway firm Renfe, Julio Gomez Pomar, was quoted by El Mundo newspaper as saying the driver, who was aged 52, had 30 years of experience with the company and had been operating trains on the line for more than a year. He said the train which derailed had no technical problems. But Mr Garzon, who was trapped in the cab after the accident, is quoted as saying moments after the crash that the train had taken the curve at 190 km/h (118mph) despite a speed limit on that section of 80km/h, unidentified investigation sources told Spanish media.

More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23461585

 

[G.T.]

spinach is disgusting - popeye

 

[waltky]

Spanish police take possession of train's black boxes...

Spanish police detain train driver
Sat, Jul 27, 2013 - Spanish police yesterday detained the driver of a train that crashed in northwestern Spain, lowered the death toll from 80 to 78 and took possession of the “black boxes” of the train expected to shed light on why it was going faster than the speed limit on the curve where it derailed.

And in an interview with the Associated Press, an US passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was traveling 194kph seconds before the crash — far above the 80kph speed limit on the curve where it derailed. The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was officially detained in the hospital where he was recovering, said Jaime Iglesias, the National Police chief of the Galicia region where the crash happened just on the outskirts of the regional capital, Santiago de Compostela. Iglesias said that Garzon Amo would be questioned “as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident.” The driver, under guard by police, cannot yet testify because of his medical condition, Iglesias said, adding that he did not have details of the medical condition but that it could delay efforts by police to question him.

The revised death toll from 80 to 78 came as forensic scientists matched body parts with each other at a makeshift morgue set up in a sports arena in Santiago de Compostela, said Antonio de Amo, the police chief in charge of the scientific service for the National Police. De Amo said police were still working to identify what they believe are the remains of six people, and that the count could change as they continue their work associating body parts with each other. Meanwhile, investigators have taken possession of the “black boxes” of the train, court spokeswoman Maria Pardo Rios. The boxes record train’s trip data, including speed and distances and braking and are similar to flight recorders for airplanes. Analysis will be performed on the boxes but she declined comment on how long the analysis will take.

Stephen Ward, 18-year-old Mormon missionary from Utah, said he was writing in his journal when he looked up at the monitor and saw the train’s speed. Then “the train lifted up off the track. It was like a roller coaster,” he said. Seconds later, Ward said, a backpack fell from the rack above him and he felt the train fly off the track. That was his last memory before he blacked out on impact. When Ward woke up, someone was helping him walk out of his train car and crawl out of a ditch where the car had toppled over. He thought he was dreaming for 30 seconds until he felt his blood-drenched face and noticed the scene around him. “Everyone was covered in blood. There was smoke coming up off the train,” he said. “There was a lot of crying, a lot of screaming. There were plenty of dead bodies. It was quite gruesome,” he said.

Spanish police detain train driver - Taipei Times

See also:

Spain train crash investigation turns to driver
July 26, 2013 — Investigations into Spain's deadliest train crash in decades have only begun, but already a key question has been answered: Experts said Friday that the driver, not a computer, was responsible for applying the brakes because no "fail-safe" system has been installed on the dangerous stretch of bending track.

The question of whether the brakes failed — or were never used — in the approach to Santiago de Compostela may remain open until police can question the injured driver and analyze the data on the train's just-recovered "black box." Police announced they had arrested 52-year-old Francisco Jose Garzon Amo on suspicion of reckless driving because the train hit the turn Wednesday traveling far faster than its posted 80 kph (50 mph) limit. The train's eight carriages packed with 218 passengers tumbled off the tracks into a concrete wall, and diesel fuel powering the engine sent flames coursing through some cabins.

As the first funeral ceremonies began Friday night, authorities working from a sports arena-turned-morgue announced they had positively identified 75 of the 78 people killed in the crash. They lowered the death toll from 80 after determining that some severed body parts had wrongly been attributed to different victims. They said five of the dead came from Algeria, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Mexico and the United States. Adif, Spain's railway agency, confirmed that a high-tech automatic braking program called the European Rail Traffic Management System was installed on most of the high-speed track leading from Madrid north to Santiago de Compostela — but the cutting-edge coverage stops just 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of where the crash occurred, placing a greater burden on the driver to take charge.

Adif spokeswoman Maria Carmen Palao said the driver from that point on had sole control of brakes and when to use them. She said even European Rail Traffic Management technology might not have been powerful enough to stop a speeding train in time. "Regardless of the system in place, the drivers know the speed limits. If these are respected, an accident should not take place," she said. "Whatever speed the train was traveling at, the driver knows beforehand what lies ahead. ... There's no sudden change in which a driver finds out by surprise that he has to change speed." Gonzalo Ferre, Adif's president, said the driver should have started slowing the train 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) before the dangerous bend, which comes immediately after the trains exit a tunnel.

He said signs clearly marked this point when the driver must begin to slow "because as soon as he exits the tunnel he needs to be traveling at 80 kilometers per hour." Spain's state-run train company, Renfe, described Amo as an experienced driver who knew the Madrid-Santiago route well. It said he had driven that train about 60 times in the past year. "The knowledge of this line that he had to have is exhaustive," Renfe's president, Julio Gomez-Pomar, said in a TV interview.

- See more at: Spain train crash investigation turns to driver | CNS News

 

[longknife]

Now the Treehugger nuts are gonna scream that we must stop development of ALL high speed rail projects!!!

 

[blastoff]

Now the Treehugger nuts are gonna scream that we must stop development of ALL high speed rail projects!!!

Oh, no! Can't someone talk some sense into them? Maybe suggest instead we only stop the development of assault high speed rail projects?

 

[Grandma]

Now the Treehugger nuts are gonna scream that we must stop development of ALL high speed rail projects!!!

Oh, no! Can't someone talk some sense into them? Maybe suggest instead we only stop the development of assault high speed rail projects?

Way to fuck up, guys.

The fact is that most of the Left actually want high-speed rail. Mass transit is cleaner than everyone each using a single vehicle.

The problem is that the US rail system is so outdated that old, slow freight trains derail at low speeds. The rails are falling apart.

Obama had plans in the Stimulus Bill to bring high speed rail to a number of states, updating the rail systems in the process. It was the REPUBLICAN governors that refused to cooperate.

 

[longknife]

Now the Treehugger nuts are gonna scream that we must stop development of ALL high speed rail projects!!!

Oh, no! Can't someone talk some sense into them? Maybe suggest instead we only stop the development of assault high speed rail projects?

Way to fuck up, guys.

The fact is that most of the Left actually want high-speed rail. Mass transit is cleaner than everyone each using a single vehicle.

The problem is that the US rail system is so outdated that old, slow freight trains derail at low speeds. The rails are falling apart.

Obama had plans in the Stimulus Bill to bring high speed rail to a number of states, updating the rail systems in the process. It was the REPUBLICAN governors that refused to cooperate.

Are you talking about something like the multi-BILLION dollar high speed rain system backed by Nevada's Dingy Harry? You know - the one that actually starts and stops in Barstow, about 100 miles from downtown LA. And DOESN'T stop in downtown Vegas.

Is THAT one of the rail systems you Leftards are pushing for?

 

[waltky]

Train driver faces multiple charges...

Driver of Spanish train that killed 79 faces multiple charges
Monday, July 29, 2013 — The driver of a Spanish train that derailed at high speed killing 79 people was provisionally charged Sunday with multiple cases of negligent homicide.

A court statement said investigative magistrate Luis Alaez released Francisco Jose Garzon Amo without bail. The statement said Garzon must appear in court once a week and is forbidden to leave Spain without permission. Garzon was not sent to jail or required to post bail because none of the parties involved felt there was a risk of him fleeing or attempting to destroy evidence, the statement said. It said the train driver's license had also been withdrawn.

Garzon was questioned for almost two hours at the court in Santiago de Compostela, the northwestern town near where the accident occurred. Garzon was driving the train carrying 218 passenger in eight cars that hurtled far over the 80-kph (50-mph) speed limit into a high-risk curve on Wednesday evening, tumbling off the tracks and slamming into a concrete wall, with some of the cars catching fire. The Spanish rail agency has said the brakes should have been applied four kilometers (2.5 miles) before the train hit the curve.

However, a local resident who rushed to the scene of the accident said in an interview broadcast Sunday that minutes after the crash Garzon had told him he had been going fast and couldn't brake. The resident, Evaristo Iglesias, said he and another person accompanied the blood-soaked Garzon to flat ground where other injured people were being laid out, waiting for emergency services to arrive.

Continued...

See also:

Spain holds memorial for train wreck victims...

Spanish to commemorate crash victims
Tue, Jul 30, 2013 - Spain was to hold a memorial service last night for the 79 people who died in the country’s worst rail disaster in decades, a day after the driver of the train was freed pending trial on charges of reckless homicide.

The ceremony was scheduled to take place at 7pm in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the high-speed train derailed. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, several ministers and two of King Juan Carlos’ children, Prince Felipe and Infanta Elena, were to attend. The eight-carriage, high-speed train crumpled and caught fire on Wednesday last week after slamming into a concrete wall. The impact was so strong that one of the carriages was thrown several meters over an embankment.

The death toll rose on Sunday to 79 after one injured person, an American woman, died. Seventy people remain in hospital, 22 in critical condition. The train driver, Francisco Garzon, 52, appeared to take the train too fast through a tight curve. He had been under arrest since Thursday last week.

Examining Magistrate Luis Alaez formally charged Garzon with “79 counts of homicide and numerous offences of bodily harm, all of them committed through professional recklessness,” the court said in a statement on Sunday night. In a closed-door hearing, Garzon admitted taking the curve too fast, blaming it on a momentary lapse, according to media reports. Among conditions of his release, Garzon was ordered to surrender his passport and check in regularly with the court.

None of the parties in the case, which include state train operator Renfe, state railway firm Adif and two insurance companies, had asked for Garzon to be jailed pending trial, and he was not seen as a flight risk, the court statement said. Garzon has worked for Renfe for 30 years, 10 as a driver. His father also worked for the service and he grew up in Renfe-owned housing in northwestern Spain. Neither lawyers nor members of Garzon’s family could be reached for comment.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/07/30/2003568533

 

[martybegan]

Now the Treehugger nuts are gonna scream that we must stop development of ALL high speed rail projects!!!

Oh, no! Can't someone talk some sense into them? Maybe suggest instead we only stop the development of assault high speed rail projects?

Way to fuck up, guys.

The fact is that most of the Left actually want high-speed rail. Mass transit is cleaner than everyone each using a single vehicle.

The problem is that the US rail system is so outdated that old, slow freight trains derail at low speeds. The rails are falling apart.

Obama had plans in the Stimulus Bill to bring high speed rail to a number of states, updating the rail systems in the process. It was the REPUBLICAN governors that refused to cooperate.

Now you only need an actual customer base, which doesnt really exist.