Wednesday, February 22, 2012

'Should this have happened on Carnival holiday, it would've been less terrible,' Schiavi

Transport Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi stated during an appearance before journalists -questions were not allowed-  that the train was slowing down as it entered the station, but “it did not stop,” and assured that “we have enough material” to determine the causes of the accident.

After Schiavi warned journalists that questions wont's be allowed as "I don't want to get into this question-answer game", the official's monologue took surrealistic tones as he stated that the first three carriages were carrying more "load" (sic) than it should since "people has the bad habit of moving forward to the first carriages as the train approaches the terminal station."

To continue, Schiavi referred that "Should this have happened yesterday [Tuesday] which was a holiday, the crash would have been less terrible." 

Likewise, the official confirmed that "between 1,200 and 1,300 commuters were in the train at the moment of the crash", and emphasized the fact that the motorman "Is a young man [28] with a flawless work record. He was well rested and had taken over the train at Castelar station."

Likewise, the official mentioned that every train "counts with a GPS system which details the speed and station. This helped to determine that the train’s speed reached 27 kilometres per hour when it was 300 metres away from the station, it went down to 20 kph when it was 40 metres from the station, but we don’t know what happened in the last 40 metres.”

Regarding the case, he said that Judge Claudio Bonadío is in charge of it and that the Transport Secretariat will present the tape of the train’s camera and the one that is on the station to determine the causes of the accident.

The Transport Secretary assured that they will find out “who is responsible for this accident and which were the causes.”

Schiavi sent his condolences to the victims’ families and also thanked the Federal Police, fire-fighters and members of health organizations that worked at the area, “it would have been worse without them.”