those who played tennis, those who had gone running, those who rode a bicycle, those who were just passing by by car. Suddenly, The green calm of the Palermo Forests (Argentina) shook and what looked like a calm morning, hotter than what was announced, became the epicenter of chaos.
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Screams, people crying, passengers hit. Shock, shock. A train on the San Martín line, which had left the Retiro station with seven cars with passengers, most of them seated, had collided with another that was almost stopped on the same track and derailed on the railway bridge that crosses Figueroa Alcorta Avenue.
In a matter of seconds, The monotonous sound of the train passing transformed into a long, metallic brake, which lasted an “eternity” of 10 seconds. What followed was a sharp impact, a blow that turned into twisted iron, and a concatenated echo of the cars crashing into each other. Chaos, confusion. What was happening? Moments later, in the midst of the confusion, an explosion was felt.
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There were also more serious injuries, such as a 10-month-old baby who was traveling with her mother and suffered multiple head injuries, although it was evolving favorably. Currently 17 people remain under observation in hospitals.
“Control, we crashed here… There was a train.” A few moments after the impact, Martín (the last name was not revealed), the driver of the passenger train, contacted the Retiro control center to report the incident and inform the location. His voice is heard broken, shocked, without understanding what was happening, as could be heard in the audios that emerged from the first communications after the impact.
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For that reason, the San Martín railway partially functioned. Mainly, the Civil Defense authorities They wanted to verify that there was no danger of detachment or falling of the metal bridge where the incident occurred. Ercolini and Rívolo hoped to be able to take statements from the engineers of the two formations to understand what had happened.
The versions about the crash
“Once again, an accident occurs due to lack of maintenance that degrades the security of the system. The theft of cables that provide energy to the traffic lights and signals that organize railway traffic is becoming more and more frequent,” stated the La Fraternidad statement.
Justice is currently investigating whether these were the causes of the incident. Why, inexplicably, were there two trains at almost the same point, on the same curve, running on the same track?
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It could have been a tragedy of greater dimensions. The director of SAME, Alberto Crescenti, who was present at the scene a few minutes later, reported that all the injured had been treated within the first hour and that There had been no fatalities. Even when all the passengers had already been transferred and taken off the embankment, it was decided to bring in the dogs of the K-9 canine brigade to verify that no user had been trapped or unattended.
The driver’s audio allows us to sense what those first moments of confusion must have been like. When he informed control that he had just crashed, someone was heard saying “Noooo!” Next, the controller responded: “Yes, yes, driver, that’s when the guard told me that he comes with an empty car. That’s what I know, I’m calling the Palermo auxiliary that got the route.” And it was heard that she modulated something like “Ranita Ocampo, will you take me?”
Once again an accident occurs due to lack of maintenance that degrades the security of the system
The driver answered: “Yes, yes, there he gave me the release (it is supposed to be the green light to move) at 25 (it is likely that he is referring to 10:25, on the hour).” Then he continued: “I don’t know if you realized that I called him several times until he gave it to me and then he gave me the way.”
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Immediately, the controller notified another formation that an accident had occurred: “9-6-4, 9-6-4, take caution, height approximately kilometer 5.”
In the first images that were known of the incident, people were seen getting off the train, assisted by doctors from the ambulances that did not stop arriving. Since the crash had occurred on the metal bridge, The rescue was more difficult. We had to climb the embankment, more than five meters high, which is very steep, and through that same place, lower the wounded, the most seriously injured, tied to the stretchers, to prevent them from falling during the transfer.
“It was 10 seconds of shaking, a terrible scare. When I realized we were on top of the bridge, I was terrified. because everything was moving. I thought we were going to fall,” Christian Maidana, 32, told La Nación that half an hour after the crash he was still at the scene, trying to understand what had happened.
According to this young man who works as a waiter in the cafeteria of a school in Villa del Parque, he had taken the train in Retiro. He was looking at his cell phone, sitting in the third car, when He felt the train begin to brake abruptly. As he recounted what he had experienced, he was still shaking from shock. Paramedics, stretchers, and the wounded circulated around him. There were people in neck braces and people calling his family to let them know he was okay.
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He could see how a young man who was standing next to them lost his balance and hit his head against a pipe and fell to the ground. “It was horrible,” he said with teary eyes, as his granddaughter ran around him. “She wanted to get out of her seat, thank goodness I didn’t let her. As soon as I felt the sudden braking, I hugged her tight,” The woman said, still shocked, while waiting for help to return home.
Doctors and firefighters did not stop caring for passengers and applying the triage system to determine who were the priority patients. “We arrived five minutes after the crash was reported. We go up to the railway bridge and I treated 25 people with various traumas, none of them serious. Scared people. They had trauma to the head, upper and lower limbs and some were going through a panic attack. Others got off the train without help and hit their knees on the stones. Just trauma, no suffocation. There were also several passengers with epitaxis (bleeding) in the nose or injured lips as a result of the blow. A 10-month-old baby was traveling on the train and had a head injury, but she is conscious. There was no broken glass,” described a SAME doctor who specializes in triage.
It was 10 seconds of shaking, a terrible scare. When I realized we were on top of the bridge
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Although he reported that he was stopped at a certain point, the locomotive that hit him was the same one that had been sent to resolve the technical conflict. The Board’s conclusion was that it was a failure in the communications system: both in how the location was reported and a deficiency in the handling of the communication received.
LA NACIÓN/ ARGENTINA (AMÉRICA GROUP OF NEWSPAPERS)
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