The Junta de Andalucía confirmed this Thursday that it has recovered two more bodies, the number of deaths in the train collision last Sunday night. The findings correspond to the last two people reported missing and who were being searched. 200 professionals have participated in the operation, who since early Monday morning have worked 24 hours a day with the aim of finding victims and removing the carriages of the Iryo and Alvia trains that collided last Sunday from the tracks.
The last two victims were under the rubble of car number 2 of the Alvia train and around two meters underground. “We had exhausted all the possibilities in the area, but in the end we insisted on an area in which even the dogs had not marked the presence of human remains. But in the end they were there and we found them under the scrap metal,” explained Francisco Carmona, technical director of the Malaga Firefighters Consortium, who has insisted on the difficulties in finding these last bodies due to the mass of iron and earth on which they had to act. The last steps, in fact, have been carried out by digging the earth by hand. “We knew they had to be there, but we had to find them. It has been very complicated,” stressed the head of the fire team that has worked since Sunday afternoon at ground zero of the accident.
The chief colonel of the Criminalistics Service of the Civil Guard, Fernando Domínguez, indicated this Thursday that among the 45 deceased there are three women of foreign nationality: from Germany, Russia and Morocco. In a press conference with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, he detailed that 22 women and 21 men died in the accident, including a minor.
According to the colonel, there are still two bodies to be identified: those that were found this afternoon in car number two of the Alvia train. Thus, the command has confirmed that there are now 43 people identified at the Institute of Legal Medicine. The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia has reported that the Integrated Data Center has already delivered 39 bodies to the families.
Meanwhile, work continues on the Adamuz railway tracks. None of the companies clarifies the deadlines in which these tasks are expected to be completed, but the task is, according to technical sources, much slower than expected because each step carried out must be authorized by the Civil Guard. And not only because of the possibility of finding those who have not yet been found, also because the agents continue with the investigation that seeks to clarify the causes of what happened.
The environment of ground zero of the derailment accumulates, every day, new machinery around it. There are four heavy-duty cranes, several gondolas – elongated trucks – and excavators, as well as road rollers. T. Access to the command post, to which the president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno, arrived after twelve noon, is also a coming and going of teams from Adif, Renfe, Iryo and other engineering companies that are collaborating in the work on the tracks. The regional president has reported that 21 victims of the accident remain hospitalized, including seven in the ICU (six adults and one minor). On Monday, he recalled, there were up to 118 people in Andalusian hospitals, “but since then there have been discharges,” he stressed before highlighting that “there have been no deaths” in hospital centers.
At the moment, only two carriages have been moved, car eight and seven of the Iryo train. The first one – the only one that overturned from that convoy – was taken to a holm oak farm a few meters from the tracks early Tuesday to Wednesday. The second has simply been placed on a gondola that remains parallel to the track. A machine worked all morning to smooth the ground to facilitate its extraction from there.
The one that continues in the same place where it was left after the accident is car number six, the first that derailed, which was immobilized by the Civil Guard in search of clues and indications that could help the criminalistics service to clarify what happened. Sources from the operation report that this investigation is the main reason why the work at the site is developing especially slowly. “In another situation it would have been to arrive, grab the wagons and take them out. But here everything depends on the Judicial Police: every time you move something they ask you to stop, they take a photo or take notes. And always like that,” emphasize those who are working on the tracks, who understand, of course, the work of the investigators. “It’s what they have to do, but that leaves us little room to work,” they add with a tired look. The easiest thing will be to remove cars one to five, since they did not derail and can be towed by a locomotive.
The main police hypothesis was that the two travelers missing until today were found among the remains of cars one and two, which fell into a slope. For this reason, and due to the difficulties in getting a crane there, it was decided to dismantle them little by little with shears. First one of large dimensions and, if in doubt, with a smaller one used by the specialists of the Provincial Firefighters Consortium of Córdoba, professionals who carry out days of up to 14 hours of work. Around it there are several machines paving the railway platform and its surroundings in order to install a large tonnage crane to lift cars 3 and 4, which are still on the tracks.
They clarify for the moment the deadlines in which all the wagons will be lifted. Until that moment, the specialists of the Railway Infrastructure Administrator cannot fully develop their work to recover the tracks so that circulation between Madrid and Andalusia can be resumed, although the date of February 2 for this purpose is maintained.
Adif sources have explained that, although the cable or catenary affected by the accident has been removed, the most important tasks have not yet been able to start. And they insist that each step requires authorization from the Civil Guard.
Dozens of agents from the Armed Institute combed the area around the accident this Friday to find clues that could help the investigation being carried out by the criminalistics service. The guards, in teams, walked slowly over the terrain, observing every centimeter of the mountain in search of clues or remains of the victims. They had the support of the Andalusian Emergency Group (GREA) who accompanied them in the observation. Every time they found an object that could be used for investigations, they reported its presence, photographed it, and it was discarded or not. In parallel, the Railway Accident Investigation Commission has also continued its investigation into the tracks.
