ATLACOMULCO, Mexico (AP) — The freight train’s horn rang out shortly before it cleaved in two a double-decker bus carrying domestic and construction workers to Mexico’s capital on Monday morning, leaving at least 10 dead, more than 50 injured and sending families to hospitals to search for answers.
Minutes earlier Isabel Segundo, 38, was chatting by phone with her 17-year-old daughter Yoana Segundo, who was aboard the bus. Like thousands of others, Yoana is a domestic worker and was commuting to her job as the sun rose over throngs of workers doing the same early Monday.
“I was terrified when I saw news of the accident. I thought my daughter had died,” Segundo said. “We were calling and calling, and all I got was voicemail.”
Late Monday, Segundo said she was relieved to hear her daughter survived as she waited outside a hospital with dozens of other families. Medical workers called out names through a megaphone as hospital staff rushed injured people on stretchers into ambulances to be transferred to other hospitals throughout the State of Mexico.
Women cried at the entrance of the medical facility, while others set up a tent in preparation for a long night of waiting to hear of news of their loved ones.
Authorities were investigating the accident, but videos of the collision and showed the bus creeping onto the train tracks as bumper-to-bumper traffic crawled through an industrial area in Atlacomulco, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Mexico City.
There was a stop sign and a decrepit railroad crossing sign, but no protective gates or lights to signal an approaching train.
Still, even 100 yards away Miguel Sánchez heard the familiar horn blast from the freight train as he started his shift at a nearby gas station.
It was the thunderous crash that followed shortly after that surprised him.
“We thought it was just a car. We never thought it would be a bus with so many people aboard,” Sánchez said.
Mexico’s train line regulatory authority did not respond to request for comment. The bus line Herradura de Plata said in a statement it was working with authorities and providing “medical, psychological, legal and logistical” help to those affected. The company spokesperson wrote that it “deeply regrets” the accident.
The train company Canadian Pacific Kansas City of Mexico in a statement called on drivers “to respect the signage and to comply with the full stop order at railroad crossings, to avoid accidents like the one this morning in Atlacomulco.”
The collision left halves of the bus on either side of the tracks.
Shortly afterward, people were moving on the second floor on the bus as the train slowed to the stop and ambulances arrived on the scene. One woman cried out, “Help me, help me.”
Discarded pieces of clothing from passengers laid on the top of bus seats.
Rebeca Miranda waited near the accident site for authorities to tell her what would happen to her sister, who was injured in the crash and taken to the hospital, and her sister’s daughter-in-law, who was killed in the crash.
Miranda, who said both relatives were domestic workers, said she couldn’t be with her sister in the hospital because she needed to find out what would be done with the other woman’s body. She was among many family members looking for where to cast blame, and said the bus should not have been crossing the tracks just as the train was careening through the intersection.
“It’s really unfortunate. Why? To beat the train. These are lives,” she said.
According to the most recent report from Mexico’s Rail Transportation Regulating Agency published in September, accidents at grade-level crossings are the most common and have been on an upward trend in recent years. Last year there were 800 accidents compared to 602 in 2020, the report said. The document did not note how many victims were involved in the accidents.
Last month, six people died when a train hit several vehicles in Guanajuato state. In 2019, nine people were killed when a freight train struck a passenger bus crossing the tracks in the central state of Queretaro.
Alberto Maximino de Jesús, a 50-year-old laborer, was headed to Mexico City for work when the train hit.
His wife Florencia de Jesús Sabino said he called her immediately after.
“‘We had an accident, a train ran us over,’” she said he told her before hanging up. Late Monday, she said he was stable but wondered who was going to take responsibility for the tragedy.
“He’s the main provider for our family,” she said. “Now that my husband is stable, I want to know how the bus company is going pay for the damages.”
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Ramses Mercado Valdes in Atlacomulco, Mexico and Megan Janetsky, Fabiola Sánchez and María Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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