Kin search for Argentine crash victims
Source: Agencies |
February 24, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
ARGENTINES desperately searched hospitals yesterday in hopes that loved ones survived a train crash that killed 50 people and sent hundreds to emergency rooms. A stunned government declared two days of mourning, with flags flying at half staff across the nation.
A federal judge was leading an investigation into what caused the rush-hour commuter train to slam into a barrier at the end of the track at a downtown station, crumpling cars around panicked riders on Wednesday.
Passengers said the train's motorman, Marcos Antonio Cordoba, struggled repeatedly with the brakes during the journey, overrunning platforms and missing one station entirely before crashing at the end of the line.
Cordoba, 28, is a five-year veteran with a good record who should have been rested because it was his first trip of the day. He remained in intensive care yesterday and had yet to make a statement, but Transportation Secretary JP Schiavi said investigators have evidence to help pinpoint the cause, from GPS devices and cameras to recordings of Cordoba's conversations.
The city's emergency medical director, Alberto Crescenti, praised rescuers who had to use vaseline and oil to pull the living and dead from a tangle of limbs and metal in the collapsed space where the momentum of the train shoved the first two cars together. It took hours to separate the bodies of more than a hundred people who were compressed into a few square meters.
"The image of all those people pleading with us to pull them out was very powerful," Crescenti said.
Emergency workers sent the injured to a dozen hospitals around Buenos Aires, and in the confusion, thousands were unsure whether their family and friends had survived, sending them on a frantic search of the city's hospitals and morgues. Many complained that the names they sought didn't show up on any lists of survivors, injured and dead.
A federal judge was leading an investigation into what caused the rush-hour commuter train to slam into a barrier at the end of the track at a downtown station, crumpling cars around panicked riders on Wednesday.
Passengers said the train's motorman, Marcos Antonio Cordoba, struggled repeatedly with the brakes during the journey, overrunning platforms and missing one station entirely before crashing at the end of the line.
Cordoba, 28, is a five-year veteran with a good record who should have been rested because it was his first trip of the day. He remained in intensive care yesterday and had yet to make a statement, but Transportation Secretary JP Schiavi said investigators have evidence to help pinpoint the cause, from GPS devices and cameras to recordings of Cordoba's conversations.
The city's emergency medical director, Alberto Crescenti, praised rescuers who had to use vaseline and oil to pull the living and dead from a tangle of limbs and metal in the collapsed space where the momentum of the train shoved the first two cars together. It took hours to separate the bodies of more than a hundred people who were compressed into a few square meters.
"The image of all those people pleading with us to pull them out was very powerful," Crescenti said.
Emergency workers sent the injured to a dozen hospitals around Buenos Aires, and in the confusion, thousands were unsure whether their family and friends had survived, sending them on a frantic search of the city's hospitals and morgues. Many complained that the names they sought didn't show up on any lists of survivors, injured and dead.
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