July 25 Photo Brief: A view of the Sun’s surface, military training for puppies, train crash in Spain
A view of the Sun’s surface via NASA, military training for puppies in Belarus, train crash in Spain said to be one of Europe’s worst rail disasters and more in today’s daily brief. | Warning: Some photos may depict injury and/or death.
- A boy on a bicycle peeks out from underneath a French soldier on patrol in an armored personnel carrier ahead of Mali’s Sunday presidential election in Timbuktu, July 25, 2013. (Joe Penney/Reuters)
- A fireman carries a wounded victim from the wreckage of a train crash near Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, July 24, 2013. A train derailed outside the ancient northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday evening, killing at least 77 people and injuring up to 131 in one of Europe’s worst rail disasters. (Xoan A. Soler/Monica Ferreiros — La Voz de Galicia via Reuters)
- Catholic pilgrims embrace while standing in the sea as they await the arrival of Pope Francis on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro July 25, 2013. Pope Francis is on the fourth day of his week-long visit for World Youth Day. (Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)
- U.S. President Barack Obama takes a tour of the Jacksonville Port dock before he speaks about the U.S. economy, in Florida July 25, 2013. (Larry Downing/Reuters)
- Nepalese youths watch as a monsoon cloud loomed over the Kathmandu skyline July 25, 2013. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
- Inmates march to celebrate Peru’s independence at the Lurigancho prison in Lima, July 25, 2013. South America’s biggest jail with more than 9,000 inmates, organized the parade to celebrate Peru’s to promote the integration of prisoners into society, according to their press release. Peru will celebrate its Independence Day on July 28. (Mariana Bazo/Reuters)
- A dynamic swirling mass of plasma is seen spinning above the Sun’s surface for over 36 hours on June 16 – 17, 2013. The mass was accompanied by two smaller prominences, which was also being pushed and pulled around by magnetic forces. (NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory Handout via Reuters)
- A Buddhist woman sits as she waits to attend a yoga session inside a meditation centre on the outskirts of Leh July 25, 2013. (Mukesh Gupta/Reuters)
- Sculptures of German composer Richard Wagner are seen outside the Gruener Huegel (Green Hill) opera house in Bayreuth July 25, 2013. Some 500 plastic sculptures made by German artist Ottmar Hoerl have been placed around the world famous Wagner opera festival to celebrate the composer’s 200th birthday. (Michaela Rehle/Reuters)
- A Belarussian military instructor trains a labrador puppy at a frontier guards’ cynology centre near the town of Smorgon, northwest of Minsk, May 29, 2013. The centre prepares instructors and trains dogs for guarding the Belarussian border throughout the year during which 70 to 100 puppies are born. The best dogs are selected to serve on the border and for breeding stock, and the rest sold to residents of Belarus and neighboring countries at the price of 1.5 to 2.7 million Belarussian rubles ($166-300). (Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)
- Cows lie in grass in front of Hafelekar mountain on a hot summer day in Innsbruck July 25, 2013. (Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters)
- Players of Brazil’s Atletico Mineiro hold up the trophy after beating Paraguay’s Olimpia in the Copa Libertadores second leg final soccer match in Belo Horizonte, July 24, 2013. (Andres Stapff?Reuters)
- Afghan men wash at a traditional hamam bathhouse in Herat on July 25, 2013. Afghans usually come in the morning for one-hour sessions inside the steam-filled rooms, paying 50 Afghanis (1 USD) each. (Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images)
- An Indian parrot hatchling is fed by hand in Dimapur on July 24, 2013, after being caught in a forest by a local hunter and offered for sale in the north-eastern Indian state of Nagaland. Wildlife of all types is frequently hunted either for consumption or for sale to residents. Despite a ban since the 90s on Indian bird species, hundreds of parrots are collected and traded annually in India. The bulk of the trade is in three to four week old chicks. (Stringer/AFP/Getty)
- North Korean soldiers attend the inauguration of a Korean war military cemetery in Pyongyang on July 25, 2013. Selected remains of North Korean soldiers deemed to be heros of the revolution were relocated from around the country to the new site. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
Driver in custody after 80 killed in Spain train crash
Teresa Medrano and Miguel Vidal Reuters
2:27 p.m. EDT, July 25, 2013
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain (Reuters) – Police took the driver of a Spanish train into custody in hospital on Thursday 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 center 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 on Thursday, the day when it should have celebrated one of Europe’s biggest Christian festivals. Authorities canceled 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 meters 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, told Reuters.
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 on Thursday and the reports could not be verified.
TRAIN HIT BEND AT SPEED
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 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph). An official source said the speed limit on that stretch of twin track, laid in 2011, was 80 kph.
“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 kilometers traveled, the European Railway Agency said. There were 218 train accidents in Spain between 2008-2011, well below the European Union average of 426 for the same period, the agency said.
EVE OF FESTIVAL
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 disaster happened at 8.41 p.m. (2:41 p.m. ET) on the eve of a festival dedicated to St. James, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, whose remains are said to rest in the city’s centuries-old cathedral.
The apostle’s shrine is the destination of the famous El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across the Pyrenees, which has been followed by Christians since the Middle Ages.
Instead of a joyous festival, masses were held every hour in the cathedral. “The main mass was transformed from a mass of joy into a mass of mourning,” said Italian pilgrim Irene Valsangiacomo.
One U.S. citizen died in the crash and five were injured, the State Department said in Washington. Mexico said one of its nationals was among the dead.
At least one British citizen was injured, a British embassy spokesman said. Several other nationalities were believed to be among the passengers.
Neighbors ran to the site to help emergency workers tend to the wounded. Ana Taboada, a 29-year-old hospital worker, was one of the first on the scene.
“When the dust lifted I saw corpses. I didn’t make it down to the track, because I was helping the passengers that were coming up the embankment,” she told Reuters. “I saw a man trying to break a window with a stone to help those inside get out.”
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia region, visited the site and the main hospital on Thursday. He declared three days of official national mourning for the victims of the disaster.
King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia also went to Santiago and visited the injured in hospital.
Passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station the train approached the curve at high speed, twisted and the carriages piled up one on top of the other.
PASSENGERS SQUASHED
“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning. … I was in the second carriage and there was fire. … I saw corpses,” he said.
Both Renfe and state-owned Adif, which is in charge of the tracks, had opened an investigation into the cause of the derailment, Renfe said.
Clinics in Santiago de Compostela were overwhelmed with people flocking to give blood, while hotels organized free rooms for relatives. Madrid sent forensic scientists and hospital staff to the scene on special flights.
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.
Allianz Seguros, owned by Germany’s Allianz, owns the insurance contract for loss suffered by Renfe passengers, a company spokeswoman told Reuters. The contract does not cover Renfe’s trains. The company had sent experts to the scene, she said.
The disaster stirred memories of a train bombing in Madrid in 2004, carried out by Islamist militants, that killed 191 people, although officials do not suspect an attack this time.
Spain is struggling to emerge from a long-running recession marked by government-driven austerity to bring its deeply indebted finances into order.
But Adif, the state railways infrastructure company, told Reuters no budget cuts had been implemented on maintenance of the line, which connects La Coruna, Santiago de Compostela and Ourense and was inaugurated in 2011.
It said more than 100 million euros a year were being spent on track maintenance in Spain.
Wednesday’s derailment was one of the worst rail accidents in Europe over the past 25 years.
(Additional reporting by Inmaculada Sanz, Sonya Dowsett, Sarah White, Andres Gonzalez, Blanca Rodriguez, Julien Toyer, Emma Pinedo, Raquel Castillo, Robert Hetz; Writing by Sonya Dowsett and Julien Toyer; editing by Barry Moody)