Castilla-La Mancha deactivates emergency plan ten days after Urda train crash

Emergency plan lifted

Castilla-La Mancha's regional government deactivated its Plan Territorial de Emergencia (Platecam) at 9:30 on Saturday, 7 November. The plan had been activated on 28 October, after a Renfe train and an Iryo train carrying nearly 550 people between them collided at Urda in the province of Toledo. The decision was taken by the plan's direction at a meeting of the Centro de Coordinación Operativa (CECOP), after all the carriages involved had been removed and the judicial police had finished their on-site inspection during the week. The Guardia Civil's static deployment at the site had also ended. During the emergency there were eight CECOPI meetings and 21 CECOP meetings, and the field command post in Urda stayed operational until the emergency was lowered from level 2 to level 1. Regional president Emiliano García-Page chaired the CECOPI meetings, while the minister for finance and public administration, Juan Alfonso Ruiz Molina, directed operations from the field post.

Victims, identifications and the injured

The Centro Integrado de Datos (CID) keeps the provisional death toll at 69. Of those, 66 bodies have been returned to families, while consular procedures for the remaining three, two Australian nationals and one Czech national, are still under way. Identification work at the forensic institutes in Toledo and Ciudad Real ended on Monday, 2 November, with 56 victims identified by fingerprints and 13 by DNA analysis. Of the dead, 40 were men and 29 were women, all of them adults. Fifty-four were Spanish nationals and 15 were foreign citizens, including four from the United States.

Spanish54

Foreign nationals15

Spanish

54 people

Foreign nationals

15 people

Data from the article text

Of the 110 people initially admitted to six hospitals in Castilla-La Mancha, 99 have been discharged. Eleven remain admitted, two in intensive care at the Toledo hospital and nine on general wards. The Toledo hospital treats six of them, Ciudad Real three, Alcázar de San Juan one and Albacete one. The Community of Madrid reported 18 injured people still hospitalized on Friday, 6 November, two of them in intensive care and 16 on wards, after one patient was transferred there from Ciudad Real.

Toledo University Hospital6

Ciudad Real General Hospital3

Mancha Centro Hospital (Alcázar de San Juan)1

Albacete General Hospital1

Toledo University Hospital

6 people

Ciudad Real General Hospital

3 people

Mancha Centro Hospital (Alcázar de San Juan)

1 people

Albacete General Hospital

1 people

Data from the article text

Support services and site clearance

The family assistance centre set up from the first day at the Casa Sacerdotal in Toledo, offering lodging, transport, meals and psychological support, closed on Friday, 6 November at 15:00 after several days without users. A shelter at the Castillo de San Servando had already been demobilized. Close to 1,400 personnel took part in the emergency response. On Saturday about forty Guardia Civil officers from several units, including the drone unit and the mounted squadron, were working at the site, and the force expected to finish removing the last two AVE carriages that day. The investigating judge had ordered the crashed trains transferred to, and held in custody at, the Renfe AVE maintenance base at La Sagra in Villaseca de la Sagra.

Political row over the funeral

Pedro Sánchez will not attend the religious funeral for the victims at Toledo Cathedral on Tuesday, 10 November, where the government will be represented by first vice president Carlos Cuerpo and education minister Milagros Tolón. Ester Muñoz, the PP spokesperson in Congress and also the party's campaign spokesperson, criticized the absence in an interview with EsRadio. She said Sánchez had invoked the Bible, Catholicism and the Pope when it suited him, and that he had likewise skipped funerals for victims of the Adamuz (Córdoba) rail accident. Muñoz argued that the prime minister should show respect for people of every faith and attend such ceremonies, because most Spaniards consider themselves Catholic even though Spain is a non-denominational state. She then said:

“It is a moral trait of the character that surprises no one.”