MEXICO CITY — A metro overpass collapsed late Monday in Mexico City, sending the cars of a train packed with passengers plunging to the ground and killing at least 23 people, including children, the city’s mayor said.
Emergency workers scrambled to a scene where tilted train cars lay amid tangled wires and twisted metal, pulling dozens of people from the wreckage and transporting more than 70 people to hospitals with injuries.
Dramatic video of the incident showed the overpass suddenly collapsing in a shower of sparks, sending up a cloud of debris as one of the train cars smashed into a vehicle on the road below.
In the chaotic aftermath, desperate relatives flocked to the scene for news of their loved ones, while others scoured city hospitals in hopes of finding their family members.
“I’m looking for my son,” the mother of a 13-year-old boy told a local television station through tears. “He was on the subway — I can’t find him.”
Many families were directed to the Belisario Dominguez Hospital, about a quarter of a mile away, where they waited for updates on the victims.
Floodlights illuminated the collapsed bridge as search and rescue teams tried to find survivors in the rubble. Ambulances, firefighters, the military and Mexico’s forensic department came and went from the scene while a helicopter hovered overhead as dawn broke, surveying the
By sunrise on Tuesday, the search for survivors had largely turned into a recovery operation, with four of the victims’ bodies still trapped in the wreckage, according to government officials.
“It is sad news,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “We send our condolences to the families of the victims of this accident.”
The crash occurred at 10:22 p.m. on one of the city’s newest stretches of track, Line 12, which was inaugurated in 2012. Local residents had expressed concern about the structural integrity of the overpass, including cracks in the concrete, after a powerful earthquake devastated parts of the city in September 2017.
Hernando Manon, 42, who lives in the area, was on his way home from work when he saw sparks light up the night sky and the train come crashing down.
He said that he was one of many people who had noticed cracks in the concrete after the earthquake. Although the cracks appeared to have been removed, he said, he did not know the extent of any repairs.
Local officials did not address specific concerns in the immediate aftermath of Monday’s accident, but Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that maintenance was carried out on the train line every day. The system as a whole has been plagued by problems in recent years.
“At this moment, we can’t speculate about what happened,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters early Tuesday. “There has to be a deep investigation, and whoever is responsible has to be held responsible.”
In the meantime, she said, Line 12 would remain closed as the authorities investigate the cause of the accident. Mexico City Metro advised people to avoid the area.
Ms. Sheinbaum did not rule out the possibility of further incidents on the damaged train line, and said that the avenue that runs below the line would be shut down during an investigation.
Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, called the crash a “terrible tragedy” in a Twitter post late Monday. “Of course, the causes should be investigated and the responsibilities for it defined.”
Mr. Ebard was mayor of Mexico City from 2006 to 2012, when the new line was constructed, and accusations of poor construction and planning emerged almost as soon as it was opened. The line was closed briefly in 2013 for repairs.
Hundreds of police officers and firefighters cordoned off the scene on Tuesday morning as relatives and friends of people believed to have been on the train gathered outside the security perimeter to seek information.
Ms. Sheinbaum said that at least one person trapped in a car in the mountain of rubble had been pulled out alive and taken to the hospital.
Hours after the collapse, rescue workers were still scrambling early Tuesday to free people trapped inside the tangle of crushed metal and collapsed concrete, which was all that still stood at the site where the train overpass had crumbled.
Dozens searched carefully among the debris, some using metal ladders to climb through the windows of the train cars to pull people to safety. A number of people were taken from the scene on stretchers as the police, emergency workers and some volunteers worked through the night. The rescues had been halted briefly around midnight as the train dangled precariously, but were restarted after it was secured.
A tearful mother, identified only as Elísabet, told the television channel Azteca Noticias that she was searching for her 13 year-old son, who had been out with others in the city center and was on the metro, about to come home. “I spoke five minutes ago with him,” she said between sobs. “He said that he was about to arrive.” She begged the authorities to “give me back my son.”
After the crash, dozens of relatives crowded around the crash site, voicing their frustration to local reporters about not being able to get closer and help get their loved ones out of the debris.
Immediately after the crash, a video showed members of the community, many wearing masks because of the coronavirus pandemic, assisting the injured. Three men could be seen carrying another young man away from the site of the wreckage. Another man hobbled from the scene, bracing himself on another man’s arm.
Others handed out water and baby wipes to help clean the faces of those who had rushed into help.
Shortly before 2 a.m., the Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlaltelolco said that at least five people remained trapped and that search and rescue workers were using a 200-ton crane to assist their efforts. But a short time later, government’s civil protection authorities indicated that there were no longer people trapped in the rubble.
Images from the scene showed the crane lifting one of the subway cars slightly from the collapsed roadway below to allow emergency workers to continue searching for anyone who was injured or trapped.
Speaking from the scene, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that one person had been pulled from a car trapped on the roadway below the collapsed rail line. At least 70 injured people had been taken to the hospital.
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A subway overpass collapsed late Monday night in Mexico City. Hector Vivas/Getty Images
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Rescue workers pulling bodies out of the wreckage early Tuesday. Pedro Pardo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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The deadly crash occurred on Line 12 of the subway system near the Olivos Station in the southeastern part of the city. Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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More than 70 people were injured, officials said. Pedro Pardo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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A rescue worker standing in front of a car trapped under the overpass. Luis Cortes/Reuters
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Workers at the site of the crash. Sáshenka Gutierrez/EPA, via Shutterstock
The subway system in Mexico City, the country’s sprawling capital, handles more than four million passengers a day and is the second-largest in the Americas, after New York City’s. And when it was inaugurated in 1969, decorated with Aztec artifacts and Maya-style friezes, it was the pride of a nation.
But in recent years it has become a symbol of urban decay.
There was concern over the integrity of the elevated tracks and support columns on the stretch of tracks where Monday’s accident occurred after a powerful earthquake hit Mexico in September 2017.
The elevated infrastructure on the subway line — known as Line 12, or the Golden Line — was damaged, El Universal newspaper reported.
Later that month, some local residents told El Universal that they feared that the damaged infrastructure might collapse. The newspaper reported at the time that a column between the Olivos and Nopalera stations had suffered structural damage. It also reported that engineers were to conduct an ultrasound survey of the reinforcing steel in 300 columns along Line 12’s elevated portion.
It was not immediately clear what work had been done to address the safety concerns. But there has been a broad decline of the system in recent years.
The Golden Line, where Monday’s accident occurred, was opened in 2012 and is the newest in the system. Yet from the outset, it has been beset by problems.
Trains running over elevated parts of the track had to slow down for fear they may derail. And just 17 months after the $2 billion line was inaugurated, the city suspended service on a large part of it.
Service was later restored, but concerns about the system as a whole have grown.
Last month, one of the capital’s 12 subway lines shut down after a track fire. And in January, a fire ripped through the metro’s downtown headquarters, killing a police officer and sending 30 others to hospital with smoke inhalation. Six subway lines were temporarily knocked offline.
Opposition parties blamed a lack of maintenance for the inferno, and the conservative National Action Party filed a criminal complaint against Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and the head of the Mexico City subway.
In March 2020, one person was killed and at least 41 others were injured when two subway trains collided in Mexico City. Ms. Sheinbaum said at the time that one of the trains had apparently backed into the other. Video of the wreckage showed that the force of the collision had left one of the trains stuck on top of the other, according to Reuters.
The next month at the Misterios station, a railway coupler — a mechanism used for joining train cars — fractured en route to its destination. Although that incident resulted in no deaths, workers asked for more safety measures, El Universal reported.
Another derailment in 2018 sent shock waves through a suburb of Mexico City. A train carrying cargo ran off the tracks, and one of its cars crashed into a house, killing five people.
The most recent serious accident occurred in 2015, when a collision between two trains left 12 people dead. In 1975, another train collision at the Viaducto station killed 31 people and left more than 70 injured, according to El Universal.
After the 2015 accident, the German-based company TÜV Rheinland was hired to examine the circumstances that might have caused it and suggest improvements to technology. The company finished its work in 2017 and was not involved in looking into the strength of existing structures, a spokesman said.
“TÜV Rheinland supervised the development of improvement measures to remedy technical problems in systems engineering,” said the spokesman, Jörg Meyer. “Our activities at that time were not related to bridge infrastructure.”
Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin.
An eight-second video that captured the moment of collapse showed moderate traffic flowing on either side of the suspended bridge when suddenly it cracked and buckled in a burst of concrete and sparks, falling between the lanes of cars.
Another video taken a few minutes later showed a handful of police officers and volunteers using construction ladders set up against the side of the train to help people down — including several who were hobbling and nearly unable to walk.
The crash was so sudden, witnesses said, that there was hardly time to scream.
One moment, passengers were zipping along an elevated stretch of track on Mexico City’s Golden Line, and then the ground fell out from beneath them.
“It happened really suddenly,” one woman told the Mexican newspaper El Universal. “I fell into everyone else. Everyone fell into everyone.”
Hernando Manon, 42, was walking home from work when he felt a tremor and heard a loud crash a few hundred yards up the street.
“There was a rumbling and then sparks. The lights went out, and we didn’t know what happened. Then we heard the sirens,” Mr. Manon said. “As we approached, we realized that the subway had collapsed.”
Surveillance footage showed the moment the overpass came crashing down onto the street, sending the train plunging to the ground in a cloud of dust and debris.
“I heard an explosion — we thought it was a stationary gas tank,” one resident, Eduardo García, told Univision Noticias, a Spanish-language media outlet, adding that he had been playing soccer at the time. Mr. García said he had immediately begun running, before seeing several ambulances.
Enrique Bonilla, 57, who was on the train at the time of the crash, told the television network Televisa that he had felt a sudden movement and heard a loud sound as the bridge was collapsing. He said that people had fallen on top of one another, and that he had vomited. Mr. Bonilla was able to grab onto a pole and, afterward, to escape through a broken window, he said, sitting on the ground after the crash.
It was all over in seconds, Mr. Bonilla added. “Thank god I came out alive.”
