Havana/The umpteenth railway accident This year’s event took place last Thursday night on a section of the line that connects Camagüey with Nuevitas. According to explained the Minister of Transportation, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, a Cupet tanker truck, loaded with 24,000 liters of diesel, blocked the road and was hit by the locomotive.
With that amount of fuel, the accident could have been worse and led to an explosion, but only three people were injured: the driver’s assistant, as well as the driver and the trailer’s companion. All were taken to the provincial hospital for examination and only the train worker remains under medical observation. The rest were discharged.
Locomotive 585, which was carrying five cars intended for passenger transportation, had left the Camagüey station at 5:40 in the afternoon and was scheduled to arrive in Nuevitas at 8:40. The crash occurred at a “level crossing” in the municipality of Minas and the train derailed, leaving it half overturned.
Also, the truck, according to the images published by Rodríguez Dávila, fell on its side and a good part of the fuel it was transporting could be recovered thanks to a team from Cupet. Until the last report, published in Granmatransit on the line was still not possible because the locomotive could not be removed from the site.
“A locomotive that directly participates in the process of reestablishing the railway traffic currently interrupted in the town of Minas was dispatched from the station in the city of Camagüey,” the official press clarified. “On the highway to Nuevitas there is passage without difficulty,” he added.
The passengers traveling on the train to Nuevitas, the minister said, were dispatched on local buses and none have been reported injured.
“The incident immediately mobilized a large operation. Managers and workers from the Ferrocarriles Centro Este company arrived at the scene, along with authorities from the Party, the Government, the Transport delegate, the Ministry of the Interior, the Civil Defense, Sium teams. [Sistema Integrado de Urgencias Médicas] and rescue and salvage, as well as Cupet directors and members of other entities,” the state press detailed.
A little over a month ago, another freight train derailed on the Hershey Linenear Jibacoa, in Mayabeque. The accident resulted in the spillage of three tank cars loaded with honey, although the press did not specify whether it was cane or bee. The origin of the merchandise was the Batalla de las Guásimas and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes sugar mills, in Camagüey.
There were also no personal injuries, but at least 300 sleepers on the line were damaged and 400 meters of track were affected by the overturn.
Railway accidents have become a frequent reality on the Island and, in the last two years, the causes are almost always related to the state of the lines and the deterioration of the machines themselves. In particular, the Central Line, which connects Havana with Santiago de Cuba, has been the scene of many of these derailments, including the one that occurred last August. in Matanzasone of the most dangerous sections. The event took place in a section near the Bellamar Caves highway, when the Guantánamo-Havana national train suffered the derailment of seven of its cars, four of which were completely separated from the rest of the convoy. Despite the magnitude of the incident, only three people were reported to be slightly injured, according to what authorities said at the time.
