62 Killed, 464 Injured as 2 Trains Collide in Chile

Officials today said at least 62 people were killed and 464 injured when two passenger trains carrying vacationers collided head-on after being routed onto the same rail because terrorists had damaged the line’s other track.

The trains, traveling at about 40 m.p.h., collided late Monday on a flat stretch of track 80 miles west of Santiago after both locomotives had rounded curves, railroad authorities said.

Police and firefighters worked late into the night to rescue passengers trapped in the twisted wreckage. They said the ruggedness of the terrain where the wreck occurred was impeding rescue efforts.

President Augusto Pinochet and his health minister visited hospitals where the injured were being treated while the minister of transportation ordered a full investigation of the causes of the collision.

Some wounded were taken away in helicopters, but many others were driven to hospitals in the private cars of local residents who went to the scene of the crash. The hospitals, short-staffed due to summer holidays, issued emergency calls for additional personnel.

The part of the line where the collision occurred had only one stretch of working track because a terrorist bombing attack ruined the other track more than a year ago, state rail spokesman Alberto Araneda said.

Araneda said the accident was “lamentably a human error by whoever was in charge of routing” the trains.

The eastbound passenger express train had left the nearby port city of Valparaiso while the crowded westbound train was heading to the beach at the height of Chile’s summer holiday season, officials said.