Santiago de Compostela derailment

Santiago de Compostela derailment
Rescue efforts on 24 July 2013
Details
Date	24 July 2013 (2013-07-24) 20:41 CEST (UTC+02:00)[1]
Location	Angrois, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain 3.2 km (2.0 mi) SE from Santiago de Compostela
Coordinates	42°51′34.2″N 8°31′40″W / 42.859500°N 8.52778°W / 42.859500; -8.52778
Country	Spain
Line	Madrid–Galicia high-speed rail line
Operator	Renfe
Incident type	Derailment
Cause	Overspeed on curve
Statistics
Trains	1
Passengers	218[1]
Crew	4
Deaths	79
Injured	143
Damage	Eight carriages, one dining car, two generator cars, two locomotives

The Santiago de Compostela derailment occurred on 24 July 2013, when an Alvia high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Ferrol, in the north-west of Spain, derailed at high speed on a bend about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) outside of the railway station at Santiago de Compostela. Of the 178 people injured, the provisional number of deaths in hospital had reached 79 by the following 28 July.^[2]

The train's data recorder showed that it was traveling at over twice the posted speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) when it entered a curve on the track. The crash was recorded on a track-side camera that shows all thirteen train cars derailing and four overturning. On 28 July 2013, the train's driver, Francisco José Garzón Amo, was charged with 79 counts of homicide by professional recklessness and an undetermined number of counts of causing injury by professional recklessness.^[3]

The crash was Spain's worst rail accident in over forty years, since a crash near El Cuervo, Seville, in 1972.^{[4][note 1]} It is also the second-deadliest HSR accident in history, after the 1998 Eschede train disaster in Germany.