The collapse of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro, on May 3 Sáshenka Gutiérrez / EFE
How is it possible that a section of Line 12, the newest and most expensive of the Mexico City Metro, collapses in a matter of seconds and kills 26 people?
Why it happened?
Who are responsible and what politicians will have to face the collapse?
Those are the questions that persist after the greatest tragedy in the Mexican capital in recent years.
Almost a month after the collapse, no authority has submitted its resignation and the main officials mentioned are engaged in exchanging accusations and disqualifications.
All this a few days before the election on June 6 and the first results of the expert opinions that will be key to clarify the incident and make a distribution of technical, legal and political responsibilities are released.
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In nine years of operation, the so-called golden line was at the center of legal disputes between the authorities on duty and the consortium that built it, as well as administrative and criminal proceedings against dozens of officials. It was closed for more than 20 months, was audited more than a dozen times since its inception and was investigated in special commissions of the Chamber of Deputies and the local Congress, where there were multiple opinions and expert opinions that were requested. The balance of the legal suits was a mountain of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that has been unearthed and turned into fertile ground for attacks between those involved. “Ebrard killer”, “Mancera killer” and “Sheinbaum killer” are some of the labels of the disqualifications that circulate on social networks.They allude to the three governments in the spotlight after the tragedy: that of Marcelo Ebrard (2006-2012), Miguel Ángel Mancera (2012-2018) and Claudia Sheinbaum, the current president.
The inaugural ribbon cutting was on October 30, 2012, more than 10 months late from the planned date and still with the works unfinished, according to the Superior Audit of the Federation. The perspective of the Ebrard Administration, which built the line, is that it was delivered in "optimal conditions" - in the words of Enrique Horcasitas, former director of the Metro Project, who supervised the work - but that it was not given the necessary maintenance or it was operated correctly. The Government of Mancera maintains, on the other hand, that the construction was damaged from origin and that the safety of more than 400,000 daily users was compromised due to derailment risks, for which it ordered the closure of the elevated section in March 2014. That was the seed of the divorce between the two politicians, then members of the Party of the Democratic Revolution,and the positions they still defend around the collapse of May 3. Sheinbaum, who has had to respond after the collapse, points out that he also received the line with problems, but has opted to wait for the expert opinions of the local Public Prosecutor's Office and the Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas.
The inaugural ribbon cutting of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro, in October 2012. Cuartoscuro
In recent weeks, the press has taken up a technical report from Systra, the French company that the Mancera Administration hired to study the faults on line 12. Systra reported cracks, fissures, a greater weight and size of the trains used, bad design of the road geometry and undulatory wear of the tracks, mostly due to decisions made at the start, but others also due to lack of maintenance. The 258-page report says, however, that "the behavior of the works in the viaduct section is normal, there are no risks of vibratory development under the passage of the trains" and that "there are no short-term actions" contemplated to civil works. The point is that the document was written to analyze the closing of 2014 and focused on electromechanical issues of the network,and not in doing a structural analysis.
More recently, lack of maintenance has been in the spotlight. A manual prepared by the construction consortium - made up of ICA, Alstom and Grupo Carso, of the magnate Carlos Slim - establishes, among other points in more than 1,000 pages, that a review of the entire structure must be carried out after an earthquake of magnitude 6 and a re-leveling after a magnitude 7 earthquake, such as the one in 2017. The question that arises is whether the Mancera Administration followed those specifications, specifically, whether it was received by Joel Ortega, the director of the Metro. "We are not aware of any document that proves that these works have been done and the lack of proper maintenance could have caused that and how much more," says Alejandro Romano, Horcasitas lawyer.
Romano refers that since the preliminary delivery of the work, on October 31, 2012, the construction consortium, obliged to provide maintenance for a year, and the Government of Mancera "had differences" and that after the deadline there was a period of five months until the closure of the line in 2014 in which it is not known who provided the maintenance. No company, according to this version, was hired. In addition, in that warranty year, Ortega, who received the work definitively, did not present complaints to the builders of hidden defects.
Ortega could not be reached for this story and has not made public statements since the incident earlier this month. Officials of the Ebrard Administration accuse him of putting the manual in a drawer, his successors claim that they never received it formally and that therefore the maintenance is based on the diagnosis of Systra. Ortega left office in July 2015, after accumulating the load due to the partial closure of line 12 in 2014 and two months after a train crash at the Oceanía station, which left one dead and more than a dozen injured, although The reasons for his departure were never made public.
"More than a maintenance manual, it is a catalog of construction errors," replies Jorge Gaviño, Ortega's successor, who has been pointed out by Morena because during his tenure the repairs were made after the 2017 earthquakes. "What they say is 'We did this, but it will sink, you have to check the screws we put in because they are of poor quality, you have to check the welds because maybe I did it wrong from origin', this is not a maintenance manual, it is a
mea fault
”, insists Gaviño, who is seeking his re-election as a local deputy. "I did not receive this document, but if I had seen it, my hair would have stood on end," he adds.
Gaviño argues that the repair work after the earthquakes was paid by Grupo Carso, with a total investment of 15 million pesos, as stated in public reports, so it would be absurd for them not to follow their own recommendations. He assures that all the necessary arrangements were made to guarantee safety after the earthquakes and that they were documented and certified, for example, the repair of the sounded column 69, less than a kilometer from where the accident occurred this year, and the reinforcement of a trab that had expired.
Gaviño says those fractures were the first red flag that was identified of possible structural failures, which is now being investigated. "Line 12 is so poorly made that it was the only one that was affected by the earthquake," says the official, who emphasizes that there have been at least three major earthquakes since then, but it is only pointed out to him. "This comes from the chancellor [Ebrard], the main person interested in saying 'I didn't go', but he is shooting himself in the foot," says the official, who has challenged him to debate the issue publicly.
Before being director of the Metro, Gaviño chaired the investigative commission of the local Congress. The report denounced that the certification of the work was delivered less than an hour before the inauguration, that 12 of the 30 trains that were projected were missing, that there were serious problems on the tracks, that there was no executive project during construction and that There were irregularities in the assignment of the work, as well as a fraud on the part of ILF Ingenieros Consultores, accused of usurping the identity of a Swiss company. Cristóbal Bonilla, director of ILF, was imprisoned for seven months and was ordered to pay five million pesos in compensation, but was acquitted this week in court.
The process ended with criminal and administrative charges from officials and Horcasitas was the main one pointed out for alleged errors in construction. "He was pointed out at everything, if something had happened in Atlanta they would have accused him of that too", ironizes Romano, who assures that there was a "brutal smear campaign" against his client, disqualified at the time for 20 years, and the Line 12. In parallel, a lawsuit ran between the Government of Mancera and the consortium. The courts gave, for the most part, the reason to the builders and to the appeals of those sanctioned. "The legal truth is that the consortium fulfilled its contractual obligations and that there was no problem in the construction," says Romano,"Either it was so well built that it endured the lack of maintenance or the inspections that had to be carried out would have detected a problem in the civil works."
Six years later, the roles are reversed.
Deputies from the Labor Party, part of the ruling coalition, denounced Gaviño and Mancera for murder on May 12 before the Attorney General's Office.
Two days later, the local press revealed that the Prosecutor's Office also opened an investigation against him for tax fraud.
"They call me a murderer and a thief, but they know that they accuse me to create a smokescreen," says Gaviño.
Carso, who built the collapsed section, has avoided commenting until the expert reports are completed.
ICA, which participated in 15 of the 20 stations, said it would not issue a particular statement.
Alstom said it focused on electromechanical and operational issues for the line.
The bulk of civil engineering experts have decided to reserve their comments until the expert opinions are known.
The current Metro Administration in charge of Florencia Serranía, who repeats after being in López Obrador's period as head of Government, has refrained from commenting and pointed out that they have put all the documentation in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office and that they are the they must decide whether to make it public or not. After a collapse, a train crash and a fire in just over two years in office, Sheinbaum was asked why Serranía remained in office after the Olivos station accident. The head of government ratified it and said that she will collaborate with the investigations.
"It would be very mean to be thinking about a political issue," said the president in the week of the incident, asked about her political future.
A week later, the approval of his management fell 22 percentage points, according to a survey by
El Financiero
, while Morena threatened to remove the jurisdiction of Mancera, the current senator, who said "attentive to the expert opinions."
"I put myself at the disposal of the authority," added Ebrard.
In the midst of the political storm, while the first tests have already been sent to the laboratory and the partial reopening of the old golden line is being considered, the public is still waiting for the answers.
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