Saturday 25 February 2012

Argentines discover 51st victim in train wreck

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentine rescue workers found another body Friday in the wreck of a train that crashed two days earlier, raising the death toll to 51. Supporters of the victim's devastated family vented their fury over failed government oversight at riot police.

The search for 20-year-old Lucas Menghini Rey, whose body was missed in the chaotic response to Wednesday's crash, focused widespread anger at the government's failure to protect passengers from long-known safety threats in the train system.

His identification was confirmed by sources investigating the crash, Argentina's state-owned Telam news agency and official Channel 7 reported.

Family and friends collapsed together in tears at the news, while others keeping vigil at the station erupted in anger. Some shouted "throw them all out, not one should remain!" The phrase became iconic during the protests of a decade ago, when public outrage over a failed economy forced a series of presidents to resign.

While the cause remains under investigation and the motorman who failed to stop in time has yet to make a statement, many commuters are furious that the government appeared to ignore repeated warnings about problems including brake failures.

Many suspect corruption and mismanagement contributed to the crash, which also injured 703 of the 1,500 passengers when the eight-car train slammed into the end of the line at less than 12 mph (20 kph).

Menghini Rey hadn't appeared on any lists of dead or injured, about 30 of whom remain hospitalized, and city officials announced Friday that all other passengers had been accounted for. His body was found after Security Minister Nilda Garre personally took over and ordered police back to the wreck, searching "even in the most impossible places," Telam reported.

Inside the station, his family and friends stacked boxes plastered with his picture and numbers to call, along with the phrase "we are as fragile as cardboard," a feeling shared by many after seeing how the massive train cars crumpled and crushed hundreds of passengers inside.

Menghini Rey's family hadn't seen him since he said goodbye early that morning to his 3-year-old daughter, promising to bring her a toy when he came back from work at a downtown call centre, his friend Fernando Diaz told The Associated Press.

But rumours flew that he had survived. One city official even said he had been seen by psychiatrists at a hospital who released him into the streets, and that he might have been suffering from shock and post-traumatic stress.

Argentina's third deadly train accident in less than a year has focused attention on the dilapidated passenger rail system, privatized in 1995 and heavily subsidized by the government since then to keep ticket prices low.

Hard stops are common around the world, rail experts say, so modern cars are designed to avoid the crumpling that can happen when the lead car hits a barrier. But these cars were built decades ago and bought as refurbished castoffs from other urban rail systems.

While a shock-absorbing bumper at the end of the line kept the front of the train intact, the cars behind it slammed into each other, shoving the second car, with hundreds of people standing inside, deeply into the first. Rescuers had to use Vaseline and cooking oil to untangle the living and dead.

Argentina boasted the continent's most modern trains in the early 20th century, but they were in decline for decades before the system was privatized in the 1990s by President Carlos Menem, who promised much better service.

The family run Trains of Buenos Aires company got the concession that includes the Sarmiento line. Repeated audits since then determined that the TBA hasn't fulfilled its contract.

The tragedy "is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with basic standards" that were identified in a 2008 report by the nation's Auditor General, said the watchdog office's chief, Leandro Despouy.

That report details multiple problems with brake systems: missing emergency brake levers and inoperable hand brakes and brake cylinders. It was presented that year to the presidency and the congress. No one did anything, complained Despouy, whose main political support comes from a minority party, the Radical Civic Union.

Company officials countered after the crash that their trains are safe, and suggested human error was to blame.

Meanwhile, justice has moved slowly in the case of Ricardo Jaime, who resigned as transportation minister after Argentine media revealed that he had accepted free flights to Brazilian vacations from TBA executives while deciding how much the company would get in government subsidies. He remains outside of jail while awaiting trial on bribery charges.

"Here the blame is shared between the company and the government that fails to control it," said Andres Peralta, a 28-year-old student who signed a leftist group's petition to re-nationalize the trains.

The government said won't decide on the TBA's future until the courts take action.

President Cristina Fernandez has been silent since the tragedy, and left the capital Friday for her home in Argentina's remote Patagonia region. The President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, planned to see her there after meeting in Buenos Aires with survivors from his country.

Feb 24, 2012

http://www.newstalk650.com/content/argentines-discover-51st-victim-train-wreck

continue reading