Police hold Spain train crash driver in custody

An aerial view of the site of the train accident near Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, yesterday. At least 80 people died when the train derailed and caught fire.Reuters/Santiago de Compostela, SpainPolice took the driver of a Spanish train into custody in hospital yesterday after at least 80 people died when it derailed and caught fire in a dramatic accident which an official source said was caused by excessive speed.The eight-carriage high velocity train came off the tracks just outside the pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain on Wednesday night. It was one of Europe’s worst rail disasters.The source had knowledge of the official investigation into a crash which brought misery to Santiago yesterday, the day when it should have celebrated one of Europe’s biggest Christian festivals. Authorities cancelled festivities as the city went into mourning.The Galicia region supreme court said in a statement that the judge investigating the accident had ordered police to put the driver in custody and take a statement from him. He was under formal investigation, the court said.Dramatic video footage from a security camera showed the train, with 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned.One local official described the aftermath of the crash as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.The impact was so huge one carriage flew several metres into the air and landed on the other side of the high concrete barrier.Some 94 people were injured, of whom 35 were in a serious condition, including four children, the deputy head of the regional government said.“We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I’d rather not tell you what I saw there,” Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year old baker from Santiago de Compostela, said.The train had two drivers, the Galicia government said, but it was not immediately clear which one was in hospital and under investigation.Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: “I’ve derailed! What do I do?”.The 52-year-old had been a train driver for 30 years, a Renfe spokeswoman said. Many newspapers published excerpts from his Facebook account where he was reported to have boasted of driving trains at high speed. The page was taken offline yesterday and the reports could not be verified.El Pais newspaper said one of the drivers told the railway station by radio after being trapped in his cabin that the train entered the bend at 190kph (120mph). An official source said the speed limit on that stretch of twin track, laid in 2011, was 80kph.“We’re only human! We’re only human!” the driver told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. “I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.”Investigators were trying to urgently establish why the train was going so fast and why security devices to keep speed within permitted limits had not worked.The train, operated by state-owned company Renfe, was built by Bombardier and Talgo and was around five years old. It had almost the maximum number of passengers.Spain’s rail safety record is better than the European average, ranking 18th out of 27 countries in terms of railway deaths per kilometre travelled, the European Railway Agency said. There were 218 train accidents in Spain between 2008 and 2011, well below the European Union average of 426 for the same period, the agency said.Firefighters called off a strike to help with the disaster, while hospital staff, many operating on reduced salaries because of spending cuts in recession-hit Spain, worked overtime to tend the injured.The train was travelling from Madrid to Ferrol on the Galician coast when it derailed, Renfe said in a statement. It left Madrid on time and was travelling on schedule, a spokeswoman said. Page 10