(Buenos Aires) Nearly 60 people were injured, including two seriously, in the collision on Friday of a commuter train in Buenos Aires with a maintenance train, opening the start of a controversy over “defunding” in the railways. public iron.
The two seriously injured people, victims of head trauma, were evacuated by helicopter, the head of emergency services (SAME), Alberto Crescenti, told the press at the scene of the accident. One, with complications, underwent successful neurosurgical intervention.
According to the public company Trenes Argentinos (TA), a seven-car passenger train collided with the maintenance train, including a locomotive and an equipment car, on a railway viaduct in the Palermo district, shortly after 10:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. Eastern). Under the impact, “the locomotive and the first passenger car derailed,” said a TA press release.
The SAME initially mentioned 90 passengers treated on site, and 30 of them transferred, with injuries of varying severity, to various hospitals in the city immediately placed on alert.
PHOTO NATACHA PISARENKO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Paramedics carry an injured person after two trains collided in Buenos Aires on May 10.
But at the end of the day, an updated report from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Health showed a total of 57 people had passed through a hospital, some on their own initiative, after leaving the scene of the accident alone.
“The majority came out,” Mr. Crescenti said at the end of the day.
After the impact, emergency services and firefighters evacuated all the passengers in around forty minutes, the mayor of Buenos Aires, Jorge Macri, said at the accident site.
“When we arrived there, people were shocked, but there were no screams, nothing,” Facundo Gomez, major of the Buenos Aires police, told AFP on the spot.
Aerial images show a wagon partly ripped open at its end, tilted against the metal railing of the viaduct passing over an avenue. Without it being clear whether it was a passenger wagon or the technical wagon.
The shock “was very strong. I heard the crash of the two cars colliding,” a passenger in the last car told the TN channel. “One person was thrown against the door, many people thrown to the ground.”
“We are alive by a miracle!” » cried a passenger who, immediately after the impact, leaned out of the window to film the trains, images relayed by several televisions.
The cable theft hypothesis
“For the moment, there is not enough information on the causes” of the accident, underlined Mr. Macri. The Minister of Transport Franco Mogetta, for his part, mentioned “multiple hypotheses”.
Technicians and forensic experts were still on the tracks several hours after the accident.
The investigation is studying in particular whether there is “a question of signaling”, both on the side of the technical train which worked on the track, and on the passenger train, said Mr. Mogetta. He also mentioned complaints of “cable theft” which the investigation will have to verify.
Thefts of copper cables or other metals have seen a sharp increase in recent months in Argentina, against a backdrop of economic deterioration, with inflation at 288% year-on-year, and 42% poverty.
The head of the train drivers’ union La Fraternidad, Omar Maturano, suggested that the lack of cable, hence a communications problem, could be to blame. And he denounced a “definancing” of Trenes Argentinos.
“There are thefts of signaling cables […] repairs are requested, but there are no spare parts, for the signaling, or for the trains. We are told that there is no budget,” he lamented.
This “deterioration of the company” suggests, according to him, the desire to lower its value, to attract the private sector with a view to a sale, or concessions. Trenes Argentinos is one of around ten state-owned companies earmarked by the ultraliberal government of Javier Milei for partial or total privatization.
“We are not for privatization, but not against concessions. Let private capital come, put the money into the infrastructure, so that the trains work as they should! “, Mr Maturano said on Radio 10.