By Nina Lopez and Michael Francis Gore
ADAMUZ, Spain, Jan 19 (Reuters) – At least 40 people died in southern Spain after a high-speed train derailed and collided with an oncoming one on Sunday night in one of Europe’s worst rail accidents in 80 years.
Twelve were in intensive care after the accident near Adamuz in the province of Cordoba, about 360 km (223 miles) south of Madrid, according to emergency services. Experts say that a faulty rail joint can be essential to determine the cause of the crash.
“The train overturned on one side… then everything went dark, and all I heard was screaming,” said Ana Garcia Aranda, 26 years old, who was being treated at a Red Cross center in Adamuz.
Limping and plastered to her face, she described how her fellow passengers dragged her off the train covered in blood. Firefighters rescued her pregnant sister from the wreckage and an ambulance took them both to hospital.
“There were people who were good and others who were hurt very, very badly… you knew they were going to die, and you couldn’t do anything,” she said.
A total of 43 missing persons reports have been filed so far at police headquarters in Huelva, Madrid, Málaga, Córdoba and Seville, officials said.
REMOTE LOCATION complicates rescue
The crash occurred in a hilly, olive-growing region accessible only by a single-track road, making it difficult for ambulances to reach the area, Iñigo Vila, national emergency director at the Spanish Red Cross, told Reuters.
Andalusia regional president Juan Manuel Moreno said at least 40 people had died, and emergency crews faced difficulties in bringing in the heavy equipment needed to lift the wreckage and reach those still under it.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez canceled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Transport Minister Oscar Puente visited the site on Monday.
Police drone footage showed how the trains, which were carrying 527 people, stopped 500 meters apart. One train car was split in two, and the locomotive was crushed like a tin can.
Experts studying the crash site found a broken joint on the tracks, which created a gap between the train sections that widened as the trains continued to travel on the track, according to a source briefed on the initial investigations.
That defective joint could be important in identifying the cause of the accident, said the source.
‘INTERACTION BETWEEN THE OUTSIDE AND THE VEHICLE’
Ignacio Barron, head of Spain’s Rail Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF), said on RTVE: “What always plays a part in a derailment is the interaction between the track and the vehicle, and this is what the commission is currently (looking at).”
Paqui, a resident of Adamuz who rushed to help rescue the survivors with her husband, said that he had “found a dead child inside, another child calling for his mother. You are never ready to see something like this.”
Police said they have opened an office in Cordoba for relatives to provide DNA samples to help identify the dead.
The Iryo train was traveling at 110 kph from Malaga to Madrid when it derailed, Renfe President Álvaro Fernandez Heredia said on Cadena Ser radio station.
Twenty seconds later, the second train, which was going to Huelva at 200 kph, either collided with the last two carriages of the Iryo train or with debris on the line, he said. The Iryo train lost a wheel which has not yet been found.
QUICK RELIEF IN ‘STRANGE CONDITIONS’
It was too early to talk about the cause, but it happened in “strange conditions,” Fernandez Heredia said, adding that human error was virtually ruled out.
The death toll was among the 20 highest from a train crash in Europe in 80 years, according to Eurostat data, and the highest in Spain since 2013, when a train derailed in the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela, killing 80.
Spanish train drivers had warned state rail infrastructure administrator Adif of “severe wear and tear” on the Madrid-Andalusia line and others, according to a letter seen by Reuters sent to Adif by train drivers’ union Semaf in August urging tighter speed restrictions.
Adif had no immediate comment.
The Iryo train, Frecciarossa 1000, was under four years old and the railway line near Adamuz was renovated last May, said Puente. Iryo said the train was last inspected on January 15.
Spain’s high-speed rail network is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world after China with 3,622 km of tracks, according to Adif.
The government was criticized last year for a series of delays in high-speed trains, caused by power cuts and the theft of copper cables from the lines.
Spain opened the network to private competition in 2020 in a bid to offer low-cost alternatives to Renfe’s Ave trains.
Iryo is a joint venture between the Italian state railway operator Ferrovie dello Stato, the airline Air Nostrum and the Spanish infrastructure investment fund Globalvia.
($1 = 0.8604 euro)
(Reporting by Nina Lopez, Michael Gore, Leonardo Benassatto, Susana Vera, Emma Pinedo and Victoria Waldersee; additional reporting by Pietro Lombardi and Jesus Aguado; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by David Latona, Sharon Singleton, Bernadette Baum and Deepa Babington)