10 years after the railway tragedy of Once in Argentina

It started like any other morning in the city of Buenos Aires.

A Wednesday in February, still in the heat of that summer of 2012 in Argentina, in which hundreds of thousands of people boarded trains, subways and buses to get to their jobs, like every day.

But after 8:30 the city was shaken.

A metropolitan train of the Sarmiento line, which was carrying some 1,500 people, collided on a platform at the Once station, in the center of Buenos Aires.

The justice determined that the tragedy, which marks ten years, left a balance of 52 deaths -counting a pregnancy- and more than 780 injured.

The event mobilized Argentine society to the point that its effects are still being felt today.

• Eleven tragedy: "If you don't know how to handle it, the pain kills you," says the father of one of the victims

22 people were sentenced to prison by the Argentine justice system, including Juan Pablo Schiavi and Ricardo Jaime, former Secretaries of Transportation, Julio de Vido, former Minister of Planning, and Marcos Córdoba, the machinist.

Reforms to a transportation system that had been deteriorating for decades were also unleashed.

In fact, although the Once accident was by far the worst, two other tragedies occurred in later years: in June 2013 two trains collided in Castelar, province of Buenos Aires, leaving three dead and hundreds injured, and In October 2013, another train collided again on the Once platform, causing dozens of injuries.

Eleven's tragedy: what happened on February 22, 2012?

At around 8:32 a.m. on February 22, a train belonging to the Trenes de Buenos Aires (TBA) concessionaire hit the bumper of the platform at platform No. 2 of the Once station, in the center of the city of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires.

The train, which was traveling at about 20 kilometers per hour – a speed five times higher than normal when entering a station – had not been able to stop.

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"What I saw was a horror scene, a horror movie that I was in. The motorman was still inside the cab, they were trying to get him out. The screams of the people, the police, the firemen," he told CNN. Paolo Menghini, father of one of the victims.

Norma Barrientos was traveling with her 14-year-old daughter, Karina Altamirano, in the first car of the train.

She was trapped in the car and suffered serious injuries to her leg after being trapped.

Her daughter died there.

"That's when the screaming started. I also screamed: 'my leg, my leg', because I thought I didn't have it. I started screaming her name. It really strikes me that I say 'why didn't I pass out? Because I was as lucid as now, but crushed there with the bodies on top," he told CNN.

The train had eight cars that crowded each other, especially the first two, which were completely crushed.

The rescuers worked for more than 24 hours to get the victims out, and the images of the twisted iron and the lifeguards working against the clock went around the world.

Juan Noir, coordinator of the Aerial Emergency Medical Care System (SAME), was one of the first to arrive at the Once station.

"I go in and see the panorama, what one interprets there ends up being 5% of what it really is, and I give notice to the rest," he told CNN.

"At the entrance of the car, strikingly all the seats were fallen forward, it is seen that all the people who were there fell on the seats and took them off the floor. A lot of coins on the floor, a lot of blood," he added.

"When we arrived at the station, the first thing I remember was hundreds of people running aimlessly," Federico Etchenique, coordinator of the SAME triage teams, told CNN.

"I remember a patient that we tried to resuscitate, and the resuscitation was not successful. And I remember that Sunday I identified in the newspaper the person that we had tried to resuscitate," he said.

Relatives of victims of the Eleven tragedy celebrate the conviction against Vido 4:39

The formation, license plate 3,772 and plate 16, which covered a section of the Sarmiento line, "was 60 years old on the tracks, without any type of security system," said Menghini.

"This tragedy could have been prevented," he added.

52 people died and 789 were injured, one of the worst railway accidents in the history of Argentina.

The initial figure was 50, but the body of another victim -Lucas Menghini- was found two days later and it was later found that one of the deceased was pregnant.

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Police and rescuers surround the train that crashed at the Once station in Buenos Aires on February 22, 2012. It is the 10th anniversary of one of the most serious railway accidents in the history of Argentina.

(Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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52 people died that day and 789 were injured.

(Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Rescue efforts continued for 24 hours.

(Credit: CNNE, CHANNEL 13, CHANNEL 7)

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The first wagons were completely destroyed.

(Credit: CNN, AFP/GETTY IMAGES, RTV)

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Police and rescue workers carry an injured person on a stretcher shortly after the crash, on February 22, 2012. (Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Rescuers transport another of the injured.

(Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Passengers wait in the wagon for the departure of a train on February 23, 2012 at Once station, Buenos Aires, one day after the tragedy.

(Credit: DANIEL GARCIA/AFP via Getty Images)

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A passenger smokes while waiting for the departure of a train on February 23, 2012. The logo of the defunct company Trenes de Buenos Aires can be seen on the car.

(Credit: DANIEL GARCIA/AFP via Getty Images)

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An injured man receives assistance after the crash.

(Credit: EFE/Martín Quintana)

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Rescuers remove the body of the 51st fatality from the rail accident on February 24, 2012, two days after the incident.

(Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Rioters set fire to a garbage container at the Once train station in Buenos Aires on February 24, 2012, after the removal of victim 52. (Credit: JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Relatives of the 52 victims of the train accident at the Once station demonstrate to demand justice in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on February 22, 2014, on the second anniversary of the disaster.

(Credit: MARIANO SANCHEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

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Former Transportation Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi, one of those convicted in 2015 for the Once tragedy.

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Former Planning Minister Julio de Vido, convicted of the Once tragedy in 2018.

Who was responsible for the Eleven tragedy?

According to Judge Claudio Bonadío's ruling of October 18, 2012, which prosecuted several defendants, the responsibilities for the Once tragedy were shared by the concession company, public officials and the driver.

The expertise, included in the ruling and collected by the Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), found that of the eight cars, only six had compressed air compressors to operate the brakes;

that maintenance tasks had been deferred for seven of the eight wagons;

that the bumpers did not have their hydraulic system in operation;

that the dead man's braking system was deactivated -which is activated if the driver loses consciousness and that Córdoba confessed to having annulled-;

and that the manual brakes were activated, but failed to stop the formation in time.

Tragedy of Eleven: the expenses of the company that operated the trains 1:21

In her academic article "Corruption kills: the relatives of victims of the Tragedy of Once and their collective actions in the construction of the railway problem", the researcher Candela Hernández recalls that the formation that crashed in Once had been manufactured in 1958 and did not receive effective maintenance, except for the essential to circulate, from 2000 to 2001. In addition, inside the train there was an overcrowding of 7.5 people per square meter, above the stipulated maximum of 5 people.

Who was tried for the Eleven tragedy?

The oral trial began in March 2014, and 135 hearings were held.

More than 200 witnesses testified in court.

There were 28 defendants, including Schiavi, Secretary of Transportation at the time of the tragedy, and Jaime, his direct predecessor who had left office in 2009. The train driver, Marcos Antonio Córdoba, and the brothers Mario and Claudio Sergio Cirigliano were also charged. , TBA owners.

Of the total accused by the Federal Oral Court 2 in 2015, 21 were convicted.

Sergio Cirigiliano received a sentence of 9 years in prison, Schiavi 8 years (later reduced to 5 years and six months), Jaime 6 years (later raised to 7 years) and Córdoba 3 years and 3 months.

Schiavi's defense described the accusations as "unfounded" and blamed the driver.

The former secretary agreed to parole in November 2021.

Córdoba also accessed this benefit in 2021.

They lost their daughter in the Eleven Tragedy and today they are fighting for a kidney transplant 1:32

Jaime, who is still in prison and has been convicted in other cases of illicit enrichment and receiving bribes, remains in prison.

He rejected his conviction for the Once tragedy claiming that he had already left the Secretariat in 2009.

"They sought to blame a government administration that, in my case, was no longer a party three years ago; it is clear that it is a persecution of the founders of the (official) Front for Victory," he said in 2019.

But the judicial fight would not stop there.

A second trial in 2018 led to the conviction of the former Minister of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services, Julio de Vido, to five years and 8 months in prison for "fraudulent administration", although he was acquitted of responsibility for the deaths.

Specifically, he was accused of not having intervened to control the TBA management, which would have been part of his role.

The memory of the tragedy of Eleven

The ruling was ratified in 2020 by the Cassation Chamber.

The defense of the former minister, who is now waiting for the Supreme Court, has maintained the absence of a crime and De Vido himself considers himself the victim of political, media and judicial persecution.

De Vido, also investigated for other causes of alleged corruption, is under house arrest, waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on a complaint appeal.

The Once tragedy revealed the great state of deterioration of the train system in Buenos Aires and Argentina, and unions in the sector stated that they had denounced the insecurity of the railway system for years

How do you remember the tragedy ten years from now?

The government of then President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner withdrew the concession to TBA and the Argentine State took over the operation of the Sarmiento line.

"It's going to be ten years, there's a lot of sadness and a lot of pain. The season has changed but I wish they had done it a long time before," said Barrientos.

This is what the Once station and one of its trains look like today, ten years after the tragedy.

(Credit: CNNEE)

A group of families of the victims created the organization Relatives and Friends of Victims and Injured of the Once 22/2 tragedy with the aim of asking for justice.

Among the members are Paolo Menghini and María Luján Rey, parents of Lucas.

"It's 10 years that seem like 10 centuries and 10 minutes at a time. It still seems to me that the last time Lucas lived was a little while ago and at the same time when I look back and see everything we did with the family group, it seems that It was much more than 10 years," Menghini said.

Luján Rey has been a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Congress since 2019 for the PRO party, of former president Mauricio Macri.

"The truth is that 10 years is a number that I didn't want to reach. I don't have a very clear way of explaining it, but I kind of feel like there's a resistance," he told CNN.

"I see my granddaughter preparing her 15 or I see my daughter who became a mother, or I see my oldest old man and there I understand everything that those 10 years imply. But, on the other hand, nothing, I feel that there is a part that she was detained there, that I fired a 20-year-old son and I keep imagining him there at 20," he said.