The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, ruled out this Wednesday leaving his post after the rail accident between two high-speed trains in Urda (Toledo), in which at least 64 people have died and more than 50 injured have been reported.
At a press appearance at the Madrid station of Atocha, the Transport official stated that he feels "absolutely devastated" by what happened, an accident that he described as "inexplicable" because of its characteristics and the number of victims. "It is one of the hardest moments one can face," Puente said before the media after the incident.
When asked whether he is considering resigning from office after this accident and the one that occurred in January in Adamuz (Córdoba), where another collision between high-speed trains caused 46 deaths, the minister indicated that, for now, he does not intend to resign, since his priority is to "clarify" everything that happened and "try to solve it".
The focus, on a command center order
The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility maintains that the impact between the two trains in Urda (Toledo) occurred after the Adif control center in Atocha authorized restoring normal traffic, an order contrary to what is provided for in railway regulations.
Sources from the Ministry cited by Europa Press detail that this decision was taken after the failure, at 8:32 a.m., of the LZB safety system, an incident that caused the stoppage of six trains on a stretch of approximately 69 kilometers.
Eight minutes later, the operator allowed the resumption of movement of all the trains, a measure that, according to the same sources, violates the regulations, since traffic should only have been resumed at "speed at sight," that is, limited to 40 kilometers per hour.
However, upon traffic being restored under normal conditions, the AVE came to travel at 200 kilometers per hour, at which point it collided with the Iryo at 8:53 a.m.