A packed train slammed into the end of the line, killing 49 people and injuring hundreds of morning commuters as passenger cars crumpled behind the engine. It was Argentina’s worst train accident in decades. Click below to read the rest of the story.
Federal Police Commissioner Nestor Rodriguez says the dead include 48 adults and one child.
At least 550 people were injured, and emergency workers were slowly extracting dozens of people who were trapped inside the first car, said Alberto Crescenti, the city’s emergency medical director. Rescuers carved open the roof and set up a pulley system to ease them out one by one.
The commuter train came in too fast and hit a shock-absorbing barrier at the end of the platform at about 16 mph (26 kph), smashing the front of the engine and crunching the leading cars behind it; one car penetrated nearly 20 feet (six meters) into the next, Argentina’s transportation secretary, J.P. Schiavi told reporters at the station.
The conductors’ union chief, Omar Maturano, told Radio 10 that the train might have come in as fast as 18 mph (30 kph).
Most damaged was the first car, where passengers share space with bicycles. Survivors said many people were injured in a jumble of metal and glass. Images from a security camera show windows exploding as the first two passenger cars crumple into each other like an accordion, with a man on the adjacent platform scrambling across the tracks to escape the wreck.
