Here is a recently updated report (07:30) from The Times newspaper in the UK. So shocking........
At least 77 people were killed and 143 injured - including one Briton - when a high-speed train careered off the rails in Spain last night and burst into flames.
The crash - the country’s worst In 41 years - happened when 13 carriages of the train from Madrid heading for the naval port of El Ferrol, with 218 passengers on board, left the tracks 3km outside Santiago de Compostela, in the northwestern region of Galicia.
Investigators said excess speed was the most probable cause, but stressed that the inquiry was at an early stage. The speed limit on that section of the track is 80kph (50 mph). The train had been travelling so fast that one of its carriages flew over the embankment and landed on a road above.
Witnesses confirmed that it had sped through a bend. “It was going so quickly . . . It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the carriages piled up one on top of the other,” Ricardo Montesco, a passenger, told Cadena Ser radio station.
“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the carriages to get out and we realised the train was burning. I was in the second carriage and there was fire. I saw corpses.” Abel Rivas, 25, was among the first residents who came out of their homes to try to help the wounded.
“We heard a tremendous noise, enormous, like nothing else. We went down and we saw the train had been completely smashed,” he told Efe news agency. “We saw a huge cloud of smoke and one of the carriages was on fire. We saw injured people trying to get children out.”
Spanish television showed the bodies of some of the dead covered with blankets lying next to the mangled remains of the derailed carriages. There was a dense cloud of smoke above the wreckage.
A spokesman for the regional government’s office described the derailment, which happened at 8.42 pm local time, as an accident, but it will stir memories of the train bombing in Madrid in 2004, by Islamists, that killed 191 people.
The crash came less than two weeks after a French passenger train derailed just south of Paris, killing six people and injuring 30 more.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Galician regional president, described the scene as “Dantesque”. “There are bodies lying on the railway track. There are also people whose lives are hanging in the balance in the operating theatre,” he said. “There is one carriage that has been crushed by another and emergency services have not been able to access it yet.”
Xaime López, a journalist for Cadena Ser radio, was clearly shaken when relating the tragedy to listeners. “Passengers said they were piled on top of each other inside the carriages. The road is full of bodies, full of bodies. It is really shocking.”
As rescue services worked to free passengers who were still trapped in the wreckage, the University Hospital in Santiago de Compostela issued an urgent appeal for blood donors to come forward because its stocks were low.
Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish Prime Minister, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, tweeted: “I want to express my affection and solidarity with the victims of the terrible train accident in Santiago.” He is due to visit the site this morning.
The city, which is the site of an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of St James by Catholics from across the world, was about to celebrate its summer festival. City authorities cancelled the festival, which was due to start today on St James’s Day, as a mark of respect to the victims.
This was the first serious accident to hit the AVE high-speed train service, which has revolutionised travel across Spain by offering cheap tickets for fast journeys across the country.
The AVE network was the pride of the previous Socialist Government which ploughed billions of euros into it during a decade-long building boom.
It is likely to be sold off by the present centre-right Government to help pay off debts accrued by loss-making regional lines.Yesterday’s crash was one of the worst rail disasters in modern Spanish history. In 1972, 77 people were killed in a derailment in Andalusia in the south and seven years ago, a metro train veered off the tracks in Valencia, killing 43.
The worst of all time for Spain is thought to be the Torre del Bierzo rail disaster which happened in January 1944 after three trains collided inside a tunnel. Officially 78 died in the crash however more recent studies believe the death toll may have been as many as 500 people.
Buen camino, Maggie
Daily report from
Camino Frances Apr/May 2013 at
http://magwood.wordpress.com
