Children were among the fatalities, Sheinbaum said. Of the 24 killed, 21 died at the scene, while the others died at hospitals. On Tuesday, a crane carefully lowered a train car containing four bodies to the ground. as a train passed along the elevated section, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said. Monday night's accident was one of the deadliest in the history of the subway, and questions quickly arose about the structural integrity of the mass transit system, among the world's busiest.Īnother 27 people remained hospitalized of the more than 70 injured when the support beams collapsed about 10:30 p.m. Photo credit: AP Photo/Fernando Llano.MEXICO CITY – The death toll from the collapse of an overpass on the Mexico City metro rose to 24 Tuesday as crews untangled train carriages from the steel and concrete wreckage that fell onto a roadway. Photograph: Subway cars dangle at an angle from a collapsed elevated section of the metro Number 12 Line, in Mexico City, on Tuesday, May 4, 2021. (Reporting by Dave Graham additional reporting by Daina Beth Solomon writing by Drazen Jorgic editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker) Line 12 had repeatedly been reviewed and declared safe by officials since it opened in 2012, but problems led to partial shutdowns from 2014 to 2015 for repairs. Sheinbaum said DNV will oversee analysis of the principal fault, and that she would be in touch with the companies involved in the line later today. Carso’s section included where the track fell. In May, ICA shared a document with a graphic showing it had built sections of Line 12 spanning 15 stations, and Carso five. ICA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company will review the preliminary findings and had no further comment, a spokesperson said. The metro was built by a consortium of Mexico’s ICA, Grupo Carso and French trainmaker Alstom SA.Īlstom last month said its role was limited to power supply, signaling, monitoring and control systems and some depot equipment, as well as testing some systems.

Responding to the initial findings, Ebrard published a two-page statement defending how his administration built the line and said that aside from the final technical report, a broader inquiry should be held to review the “entire decision-making process in the design, layout, supervision and maintenance of the work,” as well as various studies on it in recent years. Sheinbaum has faced questions about the line’s maintenance, and criticism has also been directed at Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was the driving force behind the construction of Line 12 when he was mayor of the capital from 2006 to 2012.īoth are close allies of Lopez Obrador and seen as possible successors to him in 2024 when his term ends. Grupo Carso said in a statement that it would not comment until the final report into the accident is published. The incident put a spotlight on Slim’s construction business, Grupo Carso, which was involved in building the section of the Line 12 metro route that collapsed. The collapse, Mexico’s biggest train accident in years, killed 26 people and put pressure on close allies of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as well as Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, Latin America’s richest man.

Officials did not permit questions from reporters.įurther reports on the accident are due in the coming months, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said.ĭeficiencies identified included the welding of bolts and their attachment to girders, missing bolts on some girders, different types of concrete used and unfinished or poorly executed welding, the city said. “The aforementioned allows us to submit, on a preliminary basis, that the incident was sparked by a structural fault,” Esteva told a news conference. The initial report by DNV, an external auditor, found “six deficiencies in the construction process” that helped to bring about the accident.

Mexico overpass collapse