Zugungluecke in Kuba

Zug: Havanna - Santigao: Nacht vom Di, 10.12. zu Mi, 11.12.
und Havanna: Freitag, 06.12.

(aus yahoo.com)

Dec 11 1:41 PM ET

Train Crash Kills 14, Injures 74 in Cuba

By Nelson Acosta

COLISEO, Cuba (Reuters) - A crowded passenger train derailed and overturned in central Cuba, killing 14 people and injuring 74 others, six of them seriously, and closing the country's main railway line, officials said on Wednesday.

The engine of train No. 11 heading from Havana to eastern Cuba jumped the rails and crashed on Tuesday night, pulling five passenger cars and a freight wagon over on their right side, witnesses said.

Most of the dead were traveling in the first passenger coach, which hit a concrete structure that sliced through the length of the car destroying all the windows.

"It was terrible. We heard a noise. Then we crashed and everything was dark," the train's mechanic Orlando Olivera told Reuters.

The train's engine driver, Esteban Garcia, was killed in the accident, Olivera said. The mechanic said it was his seventh accident and he was quitting the job because Cuba's old railway tracks had become too risky.

The train was traveling from the capital of Havana across the island to the eastern city of Santiago when the accident occurred outside the town of Coliseo, 32 miles east of the port city of Matanzas.

Authorities said they had not established the cause of the accident. Emergency workers used cranes to remove damaged cars and reopen the line, which links Havana and Santiago, Cuba's two largest cities.

Railway employees said the probable cause was a semiautomatic switching point that had failed due to a blackout in power supplies.

"The system is very safe and should not fail...But something has failed," the deputy director of the state-owned Railways of Cuba, Gregorio Bencomo, told Reuters.

The dead included a Salvadoran citizen, Ulises Regino Ochoa, 22, who was studying medicine in Cuba.

The 74 injured were taken to the towns of Jovellanos, Cardenas and Matanzas where the provincial public health director, Ernesto Letucet, said six were in serious condition. Olivera said the train was moving at its regular speed of 65 miles an hour when it derailed.

"This is my seventh accident. I'm not working here anymore," the 29-year-old Olivera told Reuters Television. "I am young and there is too much danger, too many accidents caused by negligence," he said.

On Friday, a passenger train crashed into a bus in Havana, injuring 22 people.

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Hoffe, Ihr habt keine Freunde / Bekannten in den Zuegen gehabt, so wie ich
leider im Nachzug nach Santiago. :-((((

[Edit: 12.12.02]
Den sonst nervenden, langsam mahlenden Muehlen kubanischer Behoerden
sei Dank. Trotz vorhandenem Zugticket / Reservierung fehlten noch
andere Papiere. Meine Freunde waren dann doch nicht im Zug und sind
somit gluecklicherweise unbeschadet geblieben.

Dennoch: Immer wieder erschreckend, wie schnell ein Menschenleben in
Kuba durch (Verkehrs) Unfälle beendet oder massiv eingeschraenkt wird
(bleibende Unfallfolgen). Da relativieren sich für mich schnell einige
"Unbequemlichkeiten" europaeischen Alltagslebens, ueber die sonst so
gerne geschimpft wird.
[Edit]

Saludos, Karsten

In Antwort auf:

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korrekter vorgang:
stoppen, nach links und rechts schauen und danach, vorausgesetzt es kommt kein zug o.ä., mit niedriger geschwindigkeit den weg auf den schienen suchen, wo das auto am wenigsten beschädigt wird und dann wieder gas geben!

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Mag banal sein, aber zumindest im Grossraum Havanna wissen es wohl
viele Cubis leider nicht besser. Denn sie fahren auch weiter, wenn
noch nicht ihr ganzes Auto ueber die Schienen passt. Wenn dann ein
Zug naht, das Auto noch halb auf dem Uebergang ist, und der Stau
davor sich nicht rechtzeitig aufloest, gehen hoffentlich die Tueren
schnell genug auf...

Saludos, Karsten