Argentina Train Crash Kills Dozens and Injures 600

The train, which runs from the ring of urban areas that surround greater Buenos Aires, crashed at about 8:30 a.m. at its final stop at the Once Station, not far from downtown Buenos Aires.

The train was carrying more than 800 passengers and traveling at an estimated 16 miles per hour when it entered the station, slamming into the barrier of the platform, destroying the engine.

“It is a very serious accident,” Juan Pablo Schiavi, the national secretary of transportation, said in his initial assessment of the crash during a televised press conference outside the Once Station. Mr. Schiavi said brake failure was the suspected cause.

“The train hit the bumper,” Mr. Schiavi said, “causing one car to crumple into another.”

He said one car pierced into another by nearly 20 feet.

The injured were taken to hospitals in the vicinity, Dr. Alberto Crescenti, head of the state emergency medical system, said on Argentine television on Wednesday. He said around midday that about 30 people were trapped in the wreckage.

Passengers told the local news media that the train, which is operated by the private company Trenes de Buenos Aires, was traveling faster than normal and had struggled to slow down when braking at stations ahead of Once Station.

Trenes de Buenos Aires said in a statement that the reasons for the crash had not been determined, though the company acknowledged that the train “wasn’t able to stop.”

Video footage of the crash taken by people at the scene showed people walking along the platform, with screams audible. People were pulling others out of the wreckage.

“I saw a lot of people bleeding and some who were trapped,” said one survivor, a 23-year-old woman, quoted by the newspaper Clarín.

Last September, a commuter train on the same line crashed into a passenger bus and hit a second train at the Flores Station, killing 11 and injuring more than 200. The bus had crossed the tracks when the barrier was down. In February 2011, four people were killed in a collision of two trains.

The newspaper La Nación said the accident was the third-deadliest in Argentina’s history, surpassed only by a 1972 collision that killed 142 people and a 1978 accident involving trains and other vehicles that left 55 dead.

Charles Newbery reported from Pinamar, Argentina, and Simon Romero from Rio de Janeiro.

View the original article here

The Lede Blog: At least 49 dead, 550 injured in train crash in Once Station in Buenos Aires

Video broadcast by C5N, an Argentine news channel, of the moment a train hit a barrier in a station in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

Updated | 2:09 p.m. A 7-year-old boy was among the first of the 49 people confirmed killed in a train crash in Buenos Aires that also left at least 550 people injured, according to local media reports, including The Buenos Aires Herald.

A packed train derailed at the Once Station, one of the city’s busy central train stations, and crashed at the end of the track about 8:30 a.m., trapping hundreds of commuters.

“There are people still trapped, people alive, and there may have been fatalities,” Argentina’s transport secretary, Juan Pablo Schiavi, told reporters before rescue workers, began removing the dead from the wreckage of twisted metal and shattered glass. According to Mr. Schiavi, the train was traveling at too high a speed when it approached the station, hitting the barrier at the end of the platform, crumpling the front engine and collapsing commuter rail cars behind it. Most of those killed were in the first two cars.

Video posted online by C5N, an Argentine news channel, showed security camera footage of the moment the train hit the barrier. The Argentine newspaper La Nacion’s report on the crash included two video clips shot from the platform shortly after the accident that show the damage to the train and passengers leaving the scene.

One of the passengers told reporters, according to local media reports: “I had people piled on top of me, none of us could move.”

To help find missing friends and family members, people turned to Twitter and other social tools asking for help, including this post seeking information about Lucas Menghini Rey and Tatiana Pontiroli.

Todo Padua busca a Lucas Menghini Rey y Tatiana Pontiroli. Que aparezcan por favor.

— Lucía. (@lululilucia) February 22, 2012

Several witnesses appear to have recorded images of the scene in the immediate aftermath of the crash. One injured man even showed a television crew video he shot on his phone, as he waited for treatment.

This is the second deadly train crash in Argentina in recent months. In September, a train flew through the air after hitting a bus and smashed into another train, killing at least 11 people and injuring 250. A security camera at the train station captured video of that accident as well.

View the original article here