8 weeks after Metro tragedy, Mexico City replaces head of transit system

07/01/2021

Source: Mexico News Daily

Exactly eight weeks after the Mexico City Metro disaster that claimed the lives of 26 people, the chief of the subway system was replaced on Monday.

Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced that Florencia Serranía, who became general director of Metro operator STC in 2018, had been replaced by Guillermo Calderón Aguilera, a veteran transport official.

The announcement came a week after Sheinbaum met with President López Obrador and businessman Carlos Slim to discuss plans to repair Line 12, an elevated section of which collapsed on May 3, causing two train carriages to plunge toward a busy road below. Slim’s company Carso Infrastructure and Construction partially built the line, the newest of the 52-year-old Metro system.

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Mexico’s Slim to fix collapsed metro line at no cost within a year

06/30/2021

Source: Reuters

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s construction firm will repair a collapsed Mexico City metro line at no cost to the government so that it can re-open in a year, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday.

The accident last month on an elevated stretch of the busy Line 12, which was built by Slim’s Grupo Carso, killed 26 people. Lopez Obrador said Slim told him in a meeting on Tuesday that he would cover the entire cost of rebuilding.

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Mexico’s President Says Carlos Slim Might Help Rebuild Collapsed Metro Line

06/23/2021

MEXICO CITY — The business tycoon Carlos Slim is willing to repair part of Mexico City’s subway system, the country’s president said Wednesday, after investigations found that shoddy work by Mr. Slim’s engineering firm had caused part of a metro line to collapse last month, killing 26 people.

But it was not clear whether that meant Mr. Slim would absorb any of the cost of fixing the line, which failed less than nine years after it opened.

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Mexico’s President Says Carlos Slim Might Help Rebuild Collapsed Metro Line

06/24/2021

Source: The New York Times

MEXICO CITY — The business tycoon Carlos Slim is willing to repair part of Mexico City’s subway system, the country’s president said Wednesday, after investigations found that shoddy work by Mr. Slim’s engineering firm had caused part of a metro line to collapse last month, killing 26 people.

But it was not clear whether that meant Mr. Slim would absorb any of the cost of fixing the line, which failed less than nine years after it opened.

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Construction ‘deficiencies’ behind deadly Mexico City subway collapse, report says

06/16/2021

Source: USA Today

MEXICO CITY – A preliminary report by experts into the collapse of a Mexico City elevated subway line that killed 26 people placed much of the blame Wednesday on poor welds in studs that joined steel support beams to a concrete layer supporting the track bed.

The city government hired Norwegian certification firm DNV to study the possible causes of the May 3 accident, in which a span of the elevated line buckled to the ground, dragging down two subway cars. 

The report also said there were apparently not enough studs, and the concrete poured over them may have been defective; the welds between stretches of steel beams also appear to have been badly done. 

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The deadly collapse of Mexico City’s ‘Golden Line’ was a tragedy foretold

05/10/2021

Source: CNN

It’s known as the “Golden Line.” The Mexico City subway system Line 12, spanning 25.1 kilometers (15.6 miles) and featuring 20 stations, was touted as one of the most expensive and ambitious public works projects in Mexican history when it was inaugurated in October 2012.

“It reflects a technological advancement and state-of-the-art features that can only be compared to the construction of the great metro systems of the world,” a Mexico City government official boasted during the kickoff ceremony.

The highly publicized ribbon-cutting was attended by the who’s-who of Mexican politics and power at the time, including then-president Felipe Calderón and Marcelo Ebrard, who was then in his last days as Mexico City’s mayor and is now foreign minister. Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man and owner of one of the construction companies involved, was also there.

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Families mourn victims of Mexico City subway collapse

05/05/2021

Source: AP

MEXICO CITY (AP) — José Luis Hernández Martínez crossed Mexico City every day on subway Line 12 between his home on the city’s south side and the body shop where he worked repairing mangled cars.

The 61-year-old’s train had emerged from beneath the city and was jostling along the elevated portion far from downtown late Monday night when two of its bright orange cars suddenly fell into a void.

Hernández Martínez was killed instantly, his son Luis Adrian Hernández Juarez said, one of 25 people who died in one of the world’s largest subway system’s worst accidents. More than 70 others were injured.

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Mexico City subway overpass collapses, killing at least 23 and injuring dozens

05/04/2021

Source: CNN

An overpass carrying a subway train collapsed in Mexico City late Monday, killing at least 23 people, including children, according to local government officials.

At least 70 people have been hospitalized, seven of whom are in serious condition, officials added.

The train was traveling on an elevated part of the city’s rapid transit system on the newest Line 12, also known as the Golden Line, when part of the overpass collapsed onto traffic below, Mexico’s Secretariat of Risk Management and Civil Protection said.

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