PARIS (AP) — Sloppy maintenance of a notoriously dangerous stretch of railroad caused a train to jump the tracks in suburban Paris last year, killing seven people and injuring nearly 200, a French prosecutor said Monday.
The packed train, carrying around 385 passengers, derailed, skidded and slammed into a railroad station in Bretigny-sur-Orge on July 12, 2013. Prosecutor Eric Lallement said the stretch of railroad where the train jumped the tracks was a “known danger zone” that was not maintained properly.
National railway SNCF and RFF — the agency that handles the rail infrastructure — said that although they had accepted responsibility for the crash, there was no systematic maintenance failure, as alleged in a court-ordered report.
Lallement said further investigation would determine how to divide blame for the ill-maintained stretch of rail, where some 100 maintenance problems were discovered after the crash.
“The high number of problems and the way they were evenly distributed … bear witness to an unsuitable maintenance and not a deliberate action,” he said.
