Santiago de Compostela Train Accident: 56 reported dead

[Murazor]

The Local, best English language source I've found so far.

National
Train crash near Santiago kills at least 35
The train derailed at around 8.40pm in the district of Angrois just outside of the pilgrimage city, Spanish media reports said. Screen grab: YouTube
Train crash near Santiago kills at least 35

Published: 24 Jul 2013 22:01 GMT+02:00 | Print version
Updated: 24 Jul 2013 22:01 GMT+02:00
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A train travelling between Madrid and the Galician town of Ferrol derailed just outside Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday killing at least 35 people, the head of the regional government has said.

"The number of dead will not be lower than 35," Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the President of Galica told news Spanish radio Cadena Ser, adding there were some 200 injured.

The high speed train derailed at around 8.40pm in the district of Angrois just outside of the pilgrimage city.

Residents told Spanish news agency Europa Press they heard an explosion at around this time.

The train with 13 carriages was carrying 240 people, Spanish media reported.

It derailed on a steep curve, the country's El Pais newspaper said.

The accident happened on the eve of the annual Galicia Day with the city about to stage celebrations.

Those activities have already been cancelled, according to Spanish media reports.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy — born in Santiago de Compestela — has already tweeted his condolences to the victims of the accident.

Last reports say at least 56 dead, images are pretty ghastly.

[madd0ct0r]

77 dead, possibly more. current theory it was due to excessive speed on a corner, not sabotage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ju ... crash-dead

At least 77 people died in Wednesday's train crash in the northern Spanish region of Galicia, a spokeswoman for Galicia's supreme court said.

Four died in hospital, the rest at the site of the accident, the spokeswoman said on Thursday morning, adding that the numbers were still provisional. Judges in Spain are responsible for recording deaths.

The crash occurred as the train approached the north-western Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela at 8.40pm. A further 131 people were reported injured in the accident, the worst in Spain for 40 years. Reports said about 20 were very seriously injured.

The death toll might rise further, a spokeswoman for the office of the central government in Galicia warned. One Briton was among the injured, the Foreign Office confirmed.

Rescue workers battled to free passengers trapped inside the carriages, several of which had overturned. Some caught fire. Bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage. Firemen clambered over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows.

"The scene is shocking, it's Dante-esque," the head of the Galicia region, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said in a radio interview.

Rescue workers carry victims from the scene of the crash.
Rescue workers carry victims from the scene of the crash. Photograph: Reuters
There were some 247 people on board the train, which was travelling from Madrid to the Galician port of Ferrol. The train jumped the tracks on what officials described as "a difficult curve" on the outskirts of Santiago. At least six carriages were derailed.

"The train started flipping over, over and over, and carriages ended up on top of others," one passenger said.

Another said: "It was going so quickly. It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other."


View Train crash, Santiago de Compostela in a larger map
Passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station: "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 realised the train was burning ... I was in the second wagon and there was fire ... I saw corpses."

One witness near the scene told the radio station she heard an explosion before seeing the derailed train.

El Pais newspaper cited sources close to the investigation as saying the train was travelling at more than twice the speed limit on a sharp curve. The recommended speed is 80km an hour (50mph), and sources suggest the train was travelling as fast as 180km an hour.

Both Renfe and state-owned Adif, which is in charge of the tracks, had opened an investigation into the cause of the derailment, Renfe said.

Injured ictims are helped from the scene of the crash outside Santiago de Compostela.
Injured victims are helped from the scene of the crash outside Santiago de Compostela. Photograph: Reuters
An official source said no statement would be made on the cause of the crash until the black boxes of the train were examined, but it was most likely an accident.

"We are moving away from the hypothesis of sabotage or attack," he said.

One carriage was thrown five metres from the track and landed on the other side of a retaining wall beside a row of houses. Several carriages were almost completely destroyed.

Clinics in the city were overwhelmed with people flocking to give blood, while hotels organised free rooms for relatives. Madrid sent forensic scientists and hospital staff to the region on special flights.

Both drivers of the train were unhurt in the crash. One of them was reportedly seen wandering dazed among the dead saying: "I've derailed, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?" It is still not clear whether the apparent excessive speed was the result of human error or a technical fault.

Spain's national rail company, Renfe, admitted that the service was running five minutes late, fuelling the hypothesis that it was trying to make up time.

A crane removes one of the coaches from the tracks.
A crane removes one of the coaches from the tracks. Photograph: Miguel Vidal/Reuters
The crash happened a day before Santiago's main festival, focused on St James. The apostle's shrine is the destination of the famous El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, followed by Christians since the middle ages. The traditional fiesta de Santiago was cancelled and the archbishop of Santiago, Julián Barrio, sent his condolences. Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, who was born in Santiago, was due at the scene on Thursday.

"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," Rajoy said in a statement.

Renfe faced criticism because it failed to issue a press release until three hours after the accident and then only reported it as a derailment without any indication of the seriousness of the accident. On Thursday night investigators were still trying to locate the train's "black box" for clues to what caused the accident.

The derailment happened less than two weeks after six people died when a train came off the tracks and hit the platform at a station in central France.

That accident may have been caused by a loose steel plate at a junction, French train operator SNCF said.

[Sea Skimmer]

Flying off a curve into a concrete wall will do bad things. The latest count is 78 dead with several cars split open. Certainly a huge endorsement for US FRA crash standards being so much higher.

[Sea Skimmer]

Video was released of the crash, one of the lighter passenger cars comes off first and then everything else follows just like you'd expect if it was going too fast.

[Borgholio]

I heard reports from Spain that the train may have been going twice the speed limit. If true, the engineer could be up for 78 counts of manslaughter...

[Murazor]

I heard reports from Spain that the train may have been going twice the speed limit. If true, the engineer could be up for 78 counts of manslaughter...

It is well and truly confirmed that the train was going at well over twice the speed limit (2.3 or some such thing).

[Soontir C'boath]

Surely the engineers who should have been certified on the route would know not to fuck with curves...

Senseless..

[cosmicalstorm]

The driver was either suicidal, incompetent or seriously ill at the time. Will be interesting to find out.

Here is the same curve being taken at correct speed:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6ca_1374772922

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Latest casualty count is 80. ERTMS is the system in place on most of Spain's rail network, but the bend where the crash occurred hadn't been fitted with it and had an older system that could warn the driver about overspeed but not actually slow the train down.

[Broomstick]

I was wondering about that - I know most of the Chicago rail system automatically slows trains both on certain curves and if they come within a certain proximity of another train. It's a damn shame regardless of cause.

[Sea Skimmer]

I didn't notice before, one of those cars actually ended up on top of the wall the train hit! I think though because it slide up the embankment, not because it was thrown on top; those people might have been best off.

It is well and truly confirmed that the train was going at well over twice the speed limit (2.3 or some such thing).

Yeah, 180kph in a 80kph bend is confirmed formally, and several people already did speed calculations from the video based on the cross tie spacing and power pylon spacing which back this up. Its also now being reported that the train was about five minutes behind schedule leading to speculation that the driver was trying to make up time; but I wonder does it matter that much on the Spanish rail system? In Japan it would, but I would think Spain more sensible on working conditions.

One passenger claimed that the train actually sped up heavily just before the crash; which could also mean something like the driver just made some kind of gross error?

[Zaune]

Could have been a bad speedometer as well. If the driver was looking at his control panel instead of the track in front of him then he might not have noticed a discrepancy until it was too late.

[Broomstick]

I would have thought vibration would have been a clue - a train "feels" different at different accelerations, and the more you ride a particular train or route the more you clue into it. I'd expect a train driver to be pretty familiar with how his train feels.

I've also heard speculation the driver might have had a medical problem, but I don't know if that's simply on the laundry list of possibilities or if there is some actual reason for suspecting that.

[Sea Skimmer]

It looks like the real answer is going to be pretty simple, incompetence. This curve came after a 80km long chunk of track that allowed 190kph running the whole way. No automatic controls exist to slow the train, and the driver apparently was known for braking late. He just drove into it without slowing down and wrecked. The report of acceleration just before the crash might well just be someone feeling lateral acceleration.

[Sea Skimmer]

This is all and all a remarkable case of fail deadly in action, with no automatic controls a disaster that was going to happen sooner then later. The line is brand new, and I see on the old google maps, the curve comes only 1000 yards after entering a major tunnel which would preclude any chance for a driver to see the curve ahead, though in general seeing anything from the cab of a high speed train is impossible, making lack of automatic controls on such trains completely insane. Not that it stopped the Chinese from building hundreds of miles of such tracks, but in Europe, well, I guess I expected better at least a such a blatantly critical point.


http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/9674/3dh2.jpg
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/8053/uxqo.jpg
These will ruin formatting but unmarked and unmarked images with the high speed line joining with the normal line added by me, since it was still being built at the time of the picture. The curve at the end of the arrow is the wreck site.

[madd0ct0r]

that's a surprisingl curvy route for high speed rail.

[Sea Skimmer]

That's the old route, I had to draw on the new route in the second image because its new enough Google Doesnt know it exists. To be clear the arrow is the new route, and shows it comes out of a tunnel and joins the old route right at the curve that killed everyone. You can see the scar on the land from construction in the first one.

[madd0ct0r]

ahhh. I thought the arrow was just pointing at the crash zone. silly me.

[Thanas]

It looks like the real answer is going to be pretty simple, incompetence. This curve came after a 80km long chunk of track that allowed 190kph running the whole way. No automatic controls exist to slow the train, and the driver apparently was known for braking late. He just drove into it without slowing down and wrecked. The report of acceleration just before the crash might well just be someone feeling lateral acceleration.

However, the train driver was experienced on this route, having made the turn before in over 60 instances.

[Sea Skimmer]

It's a high speed train, experience can easily breeds complacency since you really aren't doing much as no slowdowns are required further back on the line. That's why these trains normally have buttons to press on a regular basis just to prove the driver is paying attention at all. That's also why one of the key technologies to make such trains reasonable in the first place was automatic train control. It is amazingly not surprising that the worst high speed rail accidents have all taken place on track which did not meet high standards and in this instance, and that retarded Chinese wreck in 2011, lacked automatic controls. Its pretty pathetic really, considering that the underfunded Phily SEPTA system has automatic controls for its trolley cars on important chunks of track, and the things can almost stop on a dime anyway. I'm sure budget cuts were involved. I mean sure Spain is presently building submarines that don't float, but I don't think they originally planned for this lack of safety. The Chinese, sure, its China.

Also 60 trips isn't that many for a railroad engineer in the first place, if you do that route every daily that's only two months, and multiple round trips per day are possible though I would imagine crew rest requirements preclude that. Would you be surprised if someone driving a car for two months ect.. had a bad accident?

[cosmicalstorm]

Some bodies were mangled up so good that they inflated the initial casualtycount. It has been revised to 77 now.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The latest news is that investigators believe that the driver was on the phone at the time of the accident. It isn't clear from the stories I read whether the crash itself is on the phone call; apparently they have the recording, however, as the CNN story references "background noises" in the call of papers being shuffled, indicating he may have been distracted.

The story does note that the phone call was work related, and it isn't unusual for the operators of trains to use cell phones instead of radios for communication in certain situations. It seems the current hypothesis is that, as the train was approaching a station, it had switched from an area of automatic speed control to manual and that, being distracted by the paperwork or some other thing, the driver noticed too late that the train wasn't automatically slowing.

[Broomstick]

I'd say that was an argument for making sure the driver isn't distracted. Airlines have one pilot to fly and another than handles things like communications... how does it work for trains?

[Zaune]

Depends on the company and the type of train, I think; I know British Rail had a rule about having a second crewman in the cab of these in really bad visibility, for example. (And yes, the yellow bit is officially the front end; I think the builders had started out in the steam locomotive business and were a bit set in their ways.)

That said though, a single driver should be able to take a call without causing an accident in normal circumstances, because it's not as if he's got to steer or anything.

[Sea Skimmer]

Most if not all high speed trains use a single operator, while two man operations are still typical of freight around the world. But that's precisely because HSR is supposed to rely heavily on fail safe automatic controls, while freight is very shifty and uses a lot more track miles making it much less useful. That may change once automatic train control based on GPS is perfected, but that's a long uphill struggle in US trials since the tracks are so close together vs accuracy of even differential GPS on a fast moving vehicle.