Officials said on Tuesday they had recovered the black box that could confirm government speculation that excess speed caused a metro-train accident in Valencia, in which 41 people were killed.
”The black box has been found and is in the hands of our agents, who are in the process of analysing it”, especially to determine how fast the train was going when it crashed, Jose Ramon Garcia Anton, head of infrastructure in the Valencia regional government, told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser.
A rail workers’ union spokesperson cautioned against ”hasty speculation” that excessive speed caused the accident. ”It seems highly unlikely,” said Jose Aroca.
Forty of the 41 persons killed in the crash on Monday have been identified, according to the sub-prefect of Valencia, Luis Felipe Martinez. The driver was among those who died.
”There is still one unidentified body,” he said, adding that among the 39 injured persons was a little girl whose mother died in the same accident.
The derailment of the metro train inside a tunnel, he said on Monday, was the result of an ”an accident that was apparently brought about by excess speed and a failure at the wheel level”.
Garcia Anton, however, said on Tuesday that ”we have determined that the wheels are in perfect condition, as is the structure of the tunnel”.
”The infrastructure of the tracks, the rails and the crossbeams were not damaged in the zone of derailment,” he added.
The same train line was the scene of a crash last September, which left 35 people injured.
Prime Minister Jose Rodriquez Zapatero cut short a visit to India to travel to Valencia, officials said.
”My thoughts are with the town of Valencia … and I express my condolences with the victims of this tragedy,” he said in New Delhi.
Zapatero was to attend a funeral service in Valencia on Tuesday evening.
Two cranes above ground on Tuesday, at a location corresponding to the crash site below, were set to use cables lowered through a hole in the blacktop to straighten up and then tow the derailed train cars.
The cranes were installed between rows of eight-storey brick buildings, draped with the Vatican’s white-and-yellow flags, a reminder that Valencia was filling up this week with visitors to the Roman Catholic Church’s fifth World Family Meeting.
According to the Valencia metro website, the regional government-run company was distributing half-a-million passes to pilgrims and organisers of the event to permit them to travel freely on the system’s four lines.
Pope Benedict XVI, scheduled to preside over the closing ceremonies this weekend, has prayed for the victims, the Vatican said in a statement.
”The Holy Father was immediately informed of the tragic accident in Valencia and has followed with pain and compassion the dramatic news coming out of the town,” it said.
Four large, white tents set up on Monday for the dead and injured were still in place on Tuesday, obscuring the ”Jesus” entrance of the Metro, the one closest to the accident.
With Spain still shaken by the Madrid terrorist train bombing of 2004 that killed 191 people, officials were quick to exclude foul play in Valencia.
An interior ministry spokesperson said any terrorist link had been ”completely ruled out”.
”Everything indicates that it was an accident, that the train derailed and was hurled against the walls of a tunnel,” the spokesperson told Agence France-Presse.
Monday’s derailment happened at 1pm local time as the train was between the Jesus and Plaza de Espana stations.
A fire brigade spokesperson said that two carriages of the train had come off the rails, and that rescue services had evacuated all the survivors from the train.
Of the 39 injured, 12 remained in hospital, two in ”very critical” condition. One of the injured was said to be a pregnant woman whose wounds were life-threatening.
”There was a collision, strange noises, then nothing,” one of the train passengers told local radio.
A meeting scheduled on Tuesday between the Basque branch of Spain’s ruling Socialist Party and the banned political wing of the armed regional separatist movement ETA was cancelled following the Valencia disaster, Spanish media reported. — AFP
