On Sunday January 18, at 7:45 p.m. local time, a train derailed in Spain, crashing into an oncoming train and sending it sliding down a 13-foot slope. With 45 fatalities, the accident is the deadliest in the country’s history in over a decade.
The train that derailed, owned by the private company Iryo, was headed north to Madrid, while the second train, property of the state-owned company Renfe, was travelling in the opposite direction.
The Iryo train passed over a fractured section of straight track, which broke away under the sixth car, causing it and the final two cars to derail and obstruct the second track, on which the Renfe train was travelling. Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Ruente confirmed that the first four carriages’ wheels had grooves in them, meaning that they moved over the damaged track without a problem. However, the track began to tilt as the fifth car hurtled over it, digging grooves into the outer edge of the wheels. By the sixth car, the track had broken away, sending the last three cars crammed with 289 passengers off the rails.
The Renfe train slammed into the derailed cars and took the brunt of the impact, launching the first two carriages, carrying almost 200 passengers, down a 13-foot slope on the side of the tracks, about 2,000 feet away from the destroyed Iryo train. Forty-five people were killed in the wreckage and at least another 122 were injured, mainly from the front cars of the Renfe train.
Neither train was speeding, and the incident occurred on a straight section of rails, ruling out human error as a cause. Iryo said in a statement that the train was manufactured just four years ago and passed its latest safety inspections, making equipment malfunction an unlikely culprit. Although it is still under investigation, it is most likely that the existing fracture of the track was the reason behind the derailment, causing the collision.
As bodies were pulled from the wreckage, the residents of Adamuz, where the crash took place, united to help the survivors, using their cars as ambulances and carrying food, water, tools and blankets to the site of the collision. Many of the dead remain unidentified, and the mayor of Adamuz described the site as “utter chaos.”
