Years of Unheeded Warnings. Then the Subway Crash Mexico City
Had Feared.
By Abi-Habib, Lopez, Kitroeff & Ives, 5/4/21, NY Times

The capital had been bracing for the disaster for years.
Ever since it opened nearly a decade ago, the newest Mexico
City subway line €” a heralded expansion of the 2nd largest
subway system in the Americas €” had been plagued with struc-
tural weaknesses that led engineers to warn of potential
accidents. Yet other than a brief, partial shutdown of the line
in 2014, the warnings went unheeded by successive governments.

On Mon night, the mounting problems turned fatal: A subway
train on the Golden Line plunged about 50 feet after an
overpass collapsed underneath it, killing at least 24 people
and injuring dozens more.

The accident €” & the govts failure to act sooner to fix
known problems with the line €” immediately set off a political
firestorm for 3 of the most powerful people in Mexico: the
president & the two widely believed to be front-runners to
succeed him as leaders of the governing party and possibly,
the country.

The crash occurred at 10:22 p.m. on one of the newest
stretches of track in the subway system, the Golden Line,
also called Line 12, which was inaugurated in 2012. Nearly a
quarter of a million passengers ride Line 12 every day,
officials said.

Local residents had expressed concern about the structural
integrity of the overpass, including cracks in the concrete,
after a powerful earthquake devastated parts of the city in
Sept 2017.

Workers hired to operate and maintain the subway system
issued over a dozen complaints to transport authorities
over the years, which they said were all ignored.

€œThis could have been avoided,€� said Homero Zavala, a rep
of a union of Mexico Citys subway workers. €œIf us workers
were really listened to by this admin, a lot of problems
would be avoided.€�

But authorities ignored the workers calls for proper
maintenance, he added, & some of those who spoke out €”
including Zavala €” were fired.

Harrowing video of the accident showed the overpass suddenly
collapsing in a shower of sparks, sending up a cloud of
debris as one of the train cars smashed down into a vehicle
on the road below.

Emergency workers scrambled to access the tilted train cars
lying amid tangled wires & twisted metal, eventually pulling
dozens of people from the wreckage & transporting over 70 to
hospitals with injuries. Most of the 24 who were killed in
the crash were found dead on site by rescue crews,
officials said.

Desperate relatives flocked to the scene for news of their
loved ones, while others scoured city hospitals & searched
for any scrap of news on social media in hopes of finding
their family members.

€œIm looking for my son,€� Marisol Tapia told reporters
thru sobs. €œI cant find him anywhere.€�

Hours later, her 13-year-old son, Brandon Giovani Hernández
Tapia, was still missing.

€œI went to all the hospitals and they say hes not there,€�
she told reporters gathered at the crash site on Tues. €œThe
metro wasnt built on its own €” this flaw has been there for
a long time and no one did anything.€�

A total of 79 injured people had been taken to hospitals,
3 of whom later died, acc. to Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor
of Mexico City. Among those hospitalized were 3 minors.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico has been
criticized for imposing strict fiscal austerity measures
that have starved the capital of the money it needs to
rebuild the troubled subway system while splurging on pet
projects, including nearly 1,000 miles of railway stretching
across southern Mexico.

Soon after taking office, he also stopped the construction
of a half-built airport that a rival party had started to
build for Mexico City. Even though the govt had already
spent billions of dollars on the airport, López Obrador
scrapped it to start building another airport at a different
location, reimagining the project in his name.

Those investments have come at the expense of Mexicos more
urgent infrastructure needs, including fixing Mexico Citys
water problems & its subway system, a key mode of transport
for the sprawling capitals population of nearly 22 million.

In the aftermath of Mondays disaster, two of López Obradors
closest allies came under immediate scrutiny: Sheinbaum, the
capitals mayor, and Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister who
was mayor when the new subway line opened. Both are presumed
to be top contenders to run for the presidency when López
Obrador, limited to one term, steps down in 2024.

The new line, which serves the working-class neighborhoods
in the capitals southeast, was built by Ebrard, who was
mayor of Mexico City from 2006-12. He was accused by critics
of rushing to finish construction before his term concluded
in an effort to bolster his political legacy. Troubles
emerged immediately.

In just the first month after the line was inaugurated,
there were 60 mechanical failures on trains or on tracks,
according to local media. Trains had to slow down over
elevated stretches of track, because engineers feared derail-
ments. About a year later, the city was forced to temporarily
shut down part of the $2 billion line for repairs.

Then after a powerful earthquake struck in 2017, Mexico City
transport authorities reported €œa structural fault€� in one
of the metro lines supporting columns, which had affected
its ability to support heavy weight.

In 2018, senators from the opposition Institutional
Revolutionary Party called for Mexico City authorities to
inform Congress about irregularities in the funding of the
subway lines expansion. In an official party document, the
opposition lawmakers called the Golden Line a €œsymbol of
corruption and the misuse of public resources that prevailed
during that admin.€�

The lawmakers cited a congressional inquiry into the faulty
line which found that €œthe mods to the basic engineering,
to the original layout with the change of underground stations
to elevated stations, severely affected the technical
operating conditions€� of the subway line.

Residents living near the scene of the accident said govt
workers had fixed the column shortly after the earthquake.
But they expressed doubt about the quality of the reconstruc-
tion, after seeing how many shutdowns and maintenance issues
the line had over the years.

Hernando Manon, 42, was walking home from work Monday night
when he felt a tremor and heard a loud crash a few hundred
yards up the street.

€œThere was a rumbling and then sparks. The lights went out,
and we didnt know what happened. Then we heard the sirens,€�
Manon said, standing just a few hundred yards from the site
of the accident. €œAs we approached, we realized that the
subway had collapsed.€�

Families rushed to the scene, he said, hoping to find their
loved ones and yelling at the police demanding to be let
thru the cordon they had erected around the wreckage.

Floodlights illuminated the site of the collapse as search
& rescue teams tried to find survivors in the rubble.
Ambulances, firefighters, the military & Mexicos forensic
dept worked to find survivors & I.D. the bodies until dawn.

A 2018-2030 Master Plan for the subway system detailed major
backlogs to the maintenance of tracks and trains and warned
that trains could be derailed on the Golden Line unless major
repairs were undertaken. It is unclear whether those needed
repairs were ever carried out.

Since becoming mayor of the capital in 2018, Sheinbaum, who
is closely aligned with the presidents pursuit of austerity,
has presided over cuts to spending on the subway system.

For a year, the city did not appoint a director of infra-
structure maintenance for the subway system. Sheinbaum only
filled the role last week.

The metro has been causing troubles for Sheinbaum for years.
In 2019, several people were injured in accidents caused by
mechanical problems on subway escalators, prompting the city
to investigate more than 400 escalators in stations across
the capital.

In March 2020, one person was killed and at least 41 others
were injured when two subway trains collided in Mexico City.
Then in Jan, a fire ripped thru the subways HQ in downtown
Mexico City, killing a police officer and sending 30 others
to hospital.

At a news conference on Tues, both Sheinbaum & Ebrard faced
harsh questioning from reporters. Publicly, at least, the
two political heavyweights presented a united front.

€œWe are in agreement to get to the bottom of this & work
together to find the truth and know what caused this
incident,€� Sheinbaum said.

€œIf you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,€�
Ebrard said. €œLike anyone else, I am subject to whatever
the authorities determine, but even more so as a high-level
official, as someone who promoted the construction of the line.€�

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/w...-accident.html