Four held after trains crash

Press, 20 February 1986, Page 6

Four held after trains crash

NZPA-AP Santiago The Chilean police had arrested a stationmaster and three dispatchers who sent two trainloads of summer vacationers into the head-on collision that claimed 69 lives in the country’s worst rail disaster, authorities said yesterday. The Health Minister, Mr Winston Chinchon, reported 510 injuries, 124 of them severe, and said the death toll could reach 100' as soldiers, police and volunteer fire-fighters cut with blow-torches into the twisted wreckage

in search of trapped victims. The crash occurred on Tuesday in a valley of Chile’s Pacific coastal mountain range 140 km north-west of Santiago. Two-way rail traffic there had been reduced to one track since Leftist guerrillas bombed a rail bridge in late 1984.

More than 600 passengers, some standing, were aboard the trains — a four-car eastbound express from coastal resorts to Santiago, and a two-car train headed from Los Andes to the coast — as

they were dispatched at dusk on to the same winding track from different stations. The Government’s chief spokesman, LieutenantColonel Francisco Cuadra, also said the accident may have been caused by the theft of communications cables earlier on Tuesday that left rail operators unable to use the regular communications system. The rail operators had been forced to use a regular telephone instead, he said. Various survivor accounts said both trains

were going 60 to 80km/h when they collided.

“The crash sounded like a bomb,” said Juana Gomez, who lives near the tracks.

“I ran there and saw limbs hanging out of windows and pieces of bodies all around. It was horrifying trying to rescue those people and hearing them scream to the Lord to let them die because they could not stand it any more.”

Rescuers arriving by rail and helicopter found the westbound locomotive piled atop the other in the

steaming wreckage.

A Navy chaplain gave last rites to the dead and radio stations summoned vacationing doctors and anybody with bandages, medicine or alcohol to help out at five smalltown hospitals where survivors were rushed.

Alejandro Vial, Mayor of Limache, the nearest town, said dispatchers at the Limache and Penablanca stations had been arrested in a courtordered investigation of presumed negligence.