Spain Train Crash: Driver To Be Questioned

Police are due to question the driver of a train that derailed in Spain later, killing at least 80 people, in one of Europe's worst rail disasters.

The driver, named by local media as 52-year-old Francisco Jose Garzon, has remained under police guard in hospital since the crash on Wednesday night.

The eight-carriage train came off the tracks on a bend, hit a wall and caught fire just outside the pilgrimage destination Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

While data from the train's black box recorder is still being examined, early indications suggest the train may have been travelling at more than twice the speed limit at the time of the crash.

Mr Garzon boasted about speeding on his Facebook page

The train entered the bend at 190 km per hour (120mph), according to local media reports. The speed limit on the curve was 80km per hour (50mph).

Witnesses are reported to have heard Mr Garzon shout into a phone: "I've derailed! What do I do?"

A judge in Santiago de Compostela, capital of the region of Galicia, ordered police to take a statement from the driver.

It was not clear what kind of injuries Mr Garzon - who helped to rescue victims - had suffered.

But as his country mourned, it emerged that Mr Garzon is thought to have boasted on his Facebook page about how fast he was driving a train in March last year.

An official inspects the train's engine

The driver posted a picture of a train speedometer at 200kph (124mph) on the social networking site. His Facebook page has since been blocked.

"What a blast it would be to go parallel with the Guardia Civil (Spanish police) and go past them triggering the radar. Haha what a fine for Renfe (Spanish rail operator) haha," he wrote on what is believed to be his Facebook page.

Mr Garzon was being formally investigated and under police guard but he has not been arrested, the regional supreme court said.

Earlier reports said there was a second driver on the train, but it is believed Mr Garzon was the only driver at the time.

He is believed to have taken control of the train from a second driver about 65 miles south of Santiago de Compostela.

An aerial view of the carnage caused by the derailment

According to reports, one of the drivers realised what was about to happen before the crash and made a desperate call to Renfe ahead of the bend, saying: "I'm going at 190kmh, I'm going to derail."

In a second call to Renfe after the accident, the driver explained that he was trapped in the train.

"We are human, we are human," he is reported to have said. "I hope there are no dead because they would fall on my conscience."

Two investigations are being carried out into the catastrophe - one to look into possible failings by the driver and the other to examine the train's in-built speed regulation systems and see if it was a technical malfunction that meant the driver was not warned of the reduced speed limit around the bend.

Many questions remain unanswered about what went wrong, with some experts claiming that high speed alone would not explain the crash and speculation that the train's braking systems might have failed.

The impact was so huge one carriage flew several metres into the air

Reporting from the scene, Sky News Europe Correspondent Robert Nisbet said investigators would be focusing on the statements made by the driver immediately after the derailment.

Nisbet pointed to further reports from Spanish media suggesting the driver had told officials at Santiago de Compostela train station that an electronic warning signal was flashing inside the driver's cabin to indicate he was going to fast.

"He is said to have pressed a button to acknowledge the warning but still apparently did not slow down," Nisbet said.

State train company Renfe said Mr Garzon had been at the firm for 30 years and he had been driving trains for more than a decade. He became a an assistant driver in 2000 and a fully qualified driver in 2003.

Meanwhile, medical experts are continuing to try to identify 13 of the victims as distraught families continue to wait for news about their loved ones.

Relatives of passengers on the train wait for news of their loved ones

DNA tests are expected to be carried out on those with catastrophic injuries to identify them, with results available in the coming days.

The victims of the crash included a US citizen and a Mexican. At least one British citizen and four children were among the 95 people injured. Just over 30 of those in hospital are still critically ill.

Video footage from a security camera showed the train, which had 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track.

The impact was so huge one carriage flew several metres into the air and landed on the other side of a concrete barrier.

The Alvia 730 series train was travelling from Madrid to the port city of Ferrol when it crashed about 8.40pm local time - 7.40pm UK time - on Wednesday.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visits the scene of the crash

The crash occurred on the eve of a major Christian religious festival honouring St James, the disciple of Jesus whose remains are said to rest in a shrine.

Many of the dead or injured were believed to be Catholic pilgrims converging on the city.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, visited the scene of the crash on Thursday and declared three days of official mourning across the country.  King Juan Carlos also visited one of the hospitals where many passengers are being treated.

Local reaction to the crash has been such that an appeal for blood donations resulted in hospitals having to turn people away because they could not cope with the demand. Many local hotels are also offering free rooms to relatives of those involved.

Wednesday's train crash is the worst Spain has experienced since a three-train accident in a tunnel in the northern Leon province in 1944.

Due to heavy censorship at the time, the exact death toll for the Torre del Bierzo disaster has never been established.

The official figure was given as 78 dead, but it is thought that as many as 250 could have been killed.

There was another serious accident in Spain in 1972 when a Madrid to Cadiz express collided head-on with a local train on the outskirts of Seville. A total of 77 people died, with more than 100 injured.

The latest crash comes less than two weeks after six people were killed and scores injured in a train crash just south of Paris.

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