© Photographer: Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesMexico City Subway Plunges from Overpass, Killing Thirteen
(Bloomberg) -- The collapse of a long-troubled Mexico City metro track killed 24 people and put two of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's top allies in the line of fire Monday night, after a decade of safety concerns and investigations surrounding the project.
About 79 people have been injured, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday morning. A broken beam led to the incident on Line 12 of the metro system, she said. An international agency and the attorney general's office will investigate.
The tragedy puts the spotlight on Mayor Sheinbaum and Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, two key allies of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who are both seen as early front-runners to be Mexico's next president. Lopez Obrador said at the Tuesday briefing that his government would "hide nothing" from the public about the accident.
"It's a sign that they are very bad administrators of public works," said Veronica Ortiz, a political analyst and associate at the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. "It will harm both of them but it could very clearly be Ebrard's political grave."
Line 12 is among the newest additions to Mexico City's metro system, having opened in 2012 after long delays, design problems and an internal investigation during its construction. Service on much of the line was halted for nearly two years from 2014 over worries about structural damage and lack of maintenance. A massive earthquake in 2017 impacted much of the city's infrastructure.
Ebrard, who was Mexico City mayor when the line was built, promised to make himself available to authorities for whatever is needed. After failing to be picked for an electoral seat while the line was closed in 2015, Ebrard moved to live in France and the U.S. for three years. He later reportedly denied that he had exiled himself to avoid political reprisal.
"Causes must be investigated and responsibilities defined," Ebrard tweeted about the accident. "I reiterate I am at the entire disposal of the authorities to contribute in whatever is necessary."
'A New Site'
Sheinbaum, who has been mayor for more than two years, said the city was going to inspect the entire Line 12, on the southeast side of the city, which she said had been undergoing regular maintenance. She said the rest of the subway lines are safe, though she pointed out that as recently as January, the metro system had had another major problem, a fire in the main control room that stalled operations through mid-February.
The head of the metro workers' union, Fernando Espino, said the fault lay with the construction. "Such a new site, just eight or nine years old, has no reason to suffer a situation like this," he told Radio Formula.
Of the two companies in the consortium that won the original $1.5 billion contract to build the line, France's Alstom SA promised to cooperate with investigations while billionaire Carlos Slim's Carso Infraestructura y Construccion SA said it would await the results of the probes before commenting further. The third member of the consortium, Empresas ICA SAB, said no one was available for comment.
The Mexico City metro is one of the largest in the world, carrying about 5 million commuters per day.
Images broadcast on Milenio TV showed how the overpass collapsed and the train toppled onto automobile traffic below, amid a cloud of dust. Ambulances rushed the injured to several hospitals across the city while hundreds of firefighters and civil defense personnel worked on trying to recover people under the rubble.
(Recasts first paragraph, headline, adds context on past problems)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.