Toledo rail disaster: controllers cleared a train to run at full speed, and Iryo had raised the alarm
Sixty-nine people died when two high-speed trains collided; Spain is in three days of mourning as questions mount over an ageing signalling system.
Spain on Thursday began three days of national mourning after its worst rail disaster in years. Shortly before nine on Wednesday morning, near Urda in the province of Toledo, some 140 kilometres south of Madrid, a high-speed train run by state operator Renfe ploughed into the back of a stationary train belonging to private operator Iryo. Both were heading for Seville. The death toll stands at 69, La Libre reports, citing the regional authorities and the transport ministry. The investigating commission briefly gave a figure of 74 on Thursday but later corrected it as an error. HLN counts more than fifty seriously injured; the dead include both drivers of the Renfe train.
A clear picture of the sequence of events is emerging. According to transport minister Óscar Puente, the line's safety system failed at around half past eight, bringing six trains to a halt, RTBF writes. Controllers at rail infrastructure manager Adif then cleared the Renfe train to continue at normal speed, whereas the protocol in such a situation allows no more than 40 kilometres per hour. Puente calls that decision inexplicable, and audio recordings published by El País among others appear to back that account. Het Nieuwsblad reports that, according to Spanish media, the fault originated in three computers more than thirty years old.
That puts the LZB signalling system, in use on the Madrid-Seville line since 1992, under scrutiny. Iryo's chief executive, Fabrizio Favara, warned the Spanish Senate three weeks ago about problems with the system, HLN reports, citing El País. VRT NWS notes that Spain spends heavily on new high-speed lines but relatively little on maintenance, and that this is already the year's second fatal rail accident, after Adamuz in January, where 46 people died. Puente refuses to step down. De Morgen asks whether the disaster will weaken Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez politically even further.
The accident has also left its mark in Belgium. Antwerp provincial governor Cathy Berx will hold a large rail disaster exercise early next year, she told VRT NWS, adding that Belgian rail already runs on the more modern European safety system ETCS. Transport economist Jochen Maes (Ghent University) tells HLN that Belgium has been a frontrunner in rail safety since the Buizingen disaster.