Mexico City metro collapse victims’ families to get compensation

At least 26 people were killed and dozens more injured when a metro overpass collapsed in the Mexican capital on Monday.

Mexican government officials have promised a thorough investigation after an elevated section of Line 12 of the Mexico City metro collapsed late on Monday [File: Marco Ugarte/AP Photo]

The families of more than two dozen people killed when a train overpass collapsed in Mexico City last week will receive financial compensation, the city’s mayor has announced, as the country continues to reel from the deadly incident.

Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday that about $35,000 (700,000 pesos) would be made available to families of the 26 people who died on May 3.

The relatives will receive about $2,500 (50,000 pesos) from the city, as well as $32,650 (650,000 pesos) from the metro train line, Sheinbaum said.

“We are not going to leave them alone,” she said during a news conference. “We are going to be with them and we are going to give them all the support they require.”

More than 80 people were also injured in the collapse of an elevated section of the Line 12 metro line in southeast Mexico City.

Calls for accountability have grown as funerals for the victims were held over the past several days, and hundreds of people protested on Friday in the city to demand answers.

Sheinbaum and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador earlier promised that a thorough investigation into what happened would be conducted.

“A thorough investigation will be carried out … to know the truth,” Lopez Obrador said the day after the incident. “From that, the responsibility will be established.”

The attorney general’s office, its Mexico City counterpart and an external auditor, Norway’s DNV GL, are investigating, government officials have said.

But Sheinbaum has faced questions about whether the metro network has been properly maintained since she took office in 2018.

Line 12 was built when Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard was the mayor of Mexico City.

Ebrard called the incident “the most terrible accident we have ever had in mass transportation”.

Relatives of the victims shared personal stories this week, including Luis Adrian Hernandez Juarez, whose 61-year-old father Jose Luis took Line 12 every day to get to his job at an auto body shop.

An injured man is helped after the elevated section of the Line 12 metro line collapsed in Mexico City [File: Carlos Ramirez/EPA]

Gripping his father’s death certificate, Hernandez Juarez said emergency personnel told him his father was crushed beneath other passengers. “It’s really terrible to see your father that way for the last time,” he told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, some commuters who regularly travel on the line, said they had long feared such an incident would take place.

“Ever since it opened, it was scary,” Maria Isabel Fuentes, a domestic worker, told AP about Line 12.

But she said since the metro serves low-income neighbourhoods of the capital, it did not seem to be a priority. “We’re the same ones who always pay.”

Source: News Agencies