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Spain’s Transport Minister Óscar Puente said that the accident was caused by what he called the “inexplicable” order from a central command centre for Spain’s trains after a security system had failed. He said the train engineers were not to blame.
Puente said that at 8:30am the security system on a stretch of 63 kilometers stopped working due to a computer malfunction, causing all trains on that stretch to stop. But the central command told the RENFE train to start running again without any speed restrictions, and it ended up colliding with the stopped IRYO train at 8:53am.
Puente said that the train should never have been told to start moving again since there was still a “stop signal” active that line. And if it had, at least it should have been told to go at reduced speed.
Puente said they were still studying information to see how fast the train was going, but it could have been at 200km/h for that stretch of the track.
“I am not attributing responsibility to anyone, I am just stating the facts,” Puente said.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced three days of national mourning following the deadly train collision, vowing to investigate the disaster and address any safety failures.
“All of Spain is in mourning,” Sánchez said during a televised address near the crash site south of Madrid.
He said the government would investigate the cause of the collision, which has killed at least 68 people, and take action if negligence or safety failures were uncovered.
“If there was negligence, we will find out,” Sánchez said, speaking after travelling to the crash site.
“If there have been failures in the security system, we will respond decisively.”
Spain is a country in mourning today after a high-speed train collision killed at least 64 people and injured more than 100 others.
As rescue workers continue to search the wreckage, here is a recap of key events:
The death toll from Spain’s devastating high-speed train collision has risen to 68, with another 80 people injured, including five in a critical condition.
Emiliano García-Page, president of the Castilla-La Mancha regional government, confirmed the latest figures as emergency crews continue their work at the crash site, south of Madrid.
As our Europe correspondent David Crowe reported, two high-speed trains collided in central Spain on Wednesday morning (Thursday AEDT) in the province of Toledo.
The accident comes with memories still fresh of another crash between high-speed trains in southern Spain in January involving trains from the same two companies.
One train, run by the state-owned RENFE company, ran into the tail of the other train owned by private company IRYO that had stopped, knocking two of its cars off the track in a rural area between two villages.
