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| FILE - In this July 25, 2013 file photo, a derailed train car is lifted by a crane at the site of a train accident in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. A Spanish court official said Monday July 29, 2013 that judicial police would soon begin extracting information from the “black box” of a train that crashed last week killing 79 people and injuring some 130 in the country’s worst train accident in decades. It is hoped the box might establish what happened in the final seconds prior to the crash. The investigation has increasingly focused on why the driver failed to brake in time to stop the train from hurtling into a dangerous curve, where it careered off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall. On Monday, Spain’s royal family and leading politicians were to attend a somber Mass in homage to the victims killed and injured. |
MADRID (AP)
-- The driver was on the phone with a colleague and apparently looking
at a document as his train barreled ahead at 95 mph (153 kph) - almost
twice the speed limit. Suddenly, a notorious curve was upon him.
He hit the brakes too late.
The
train, carrying 218 passengers in eight carriages, hurtled off the
tracks and slammed into a concrete wall, killing 79 people.
On
Tuesday, investigators looking into the crash announced their
preliminary findings from analysis of the train's data-recording "black
boxes," suggesting that human error appears to be the cause of Spain's
worst railway disaster in decades.
The
derailment occurred near Santiago de Compostela, a city in northwestern
Spain, late last Wednesday.
Some 66 people injured in the crash are
still hospitalized, 15 of them in critical condition.
The
accident cast a pall over the city, which is the last stop for the
faithful who make it to the end of the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage
route that has drawn Christians since the Middle Ages. The crash
occurred on the eve of annual festivities at the shrine, which
subsequently were canceled.
The disaster also
stunned the rest of Spain, with Spanish royals and political leaders
joining hundreds of people in Santiago de Compostela's storied
12th-century cathedral Monday evening to mourn the dead.
According
to the investigation so far, train driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo
received a call from an official of national rail company Renfe on his
work phone in the cabin, not his personal cellphone, to tell him what
approach to take toward his final destination.
The
Renfe employee on the telephone "appears to be a controller," a person
who organizes train traffic across the rail network, said a statement
from a court in Santiago de Compostela, where the investigation is
based.
"From the contents of the conversation
and from the background noise it seems that the driver (was) consulting a
plan or similar paper document."
The
statement on the preliminary findings did not indicate whether such a
phone conversation is common between a driver of a moving train and a
controller, and it did not say how long the call lasted. It did not name
the Renfe official who called the driver, nor did it further describe
what plan or document the driver was consulting.
The
train had been going as fast as 119 mph (192 kph) shortly before the
derailment, and the driver activated the brakes "seconds before the
crash," according to the statement. The speed limit on the section of
track where the crash happened was 50 mph (80 kph).
Authorities
have said that a high-tech automatic braking program called the
European Rail Traffic Management System was installed on most of the
high-speed track leading from Madrid north to Santiago de Compostela -
the route Garzon's train took. But the cutting-edge coverage stops just 5
kilometers (3 miles) south of where the crash occurred, placing a
greater burden on the driver to take charge.
The
Spanish rail company has said the brakes should have been applied four
kilometers (2.5 miles) before the train hit the curve.
A
court spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the boxes "did not
indicate any technical failures" contributed to the accident. She spoke
on condition of anonymity because court regulations bar her from
identifying herself by name.
Garzon was
provisionally charged Sunday with multiple counts of negligent homicide.
He was not sent to jail or required to post bail because none of the
parties involved felt there was a risk of him fleeing or attempting to
destroy evidence, according to a court statement.
Investigators
from the court, forensic police experts, the Ministry of Transport and
Renfe examined the contents of the two black boxes recovered from the
lead and rear cars of the train.
But the
investigation is ongoing and could last several more weeks. The next
steps include measuring the wheels on the cars and examining the
locomotive, the statement said, without providing an explanation for
those checks.
Sniffer dogs will also be used to search for human remains in the wreckage, it said.
