At least 26 people were killed and dozens more injured when a subway overpass collapsed in the Mexican capital on Monday.
Families of more than two dozen people died when an overpass of the train collapsed in Mexico City last week will receive financial compensation, the city’s mayor announced, while the country continues to reject the deadly incident.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday that about $ 35,000 (700,000 pesos) would be made available to the families of the 26 people who died on May 3.
Relatives will receive about $ 2,500 (50,000 pesos) from the city, as well as $ 32,650 (650,000 pesos) from the subway train line, Sheinbaum said.
“We will not leave them alone,” he said during a press conference. “We will be with them and give them all the support they need.”
More than 80 people were also injured when an elevated section of subway line 12 collapsed line southeast of Mexico City.
Demands for accountability have grown as funerals were held for the victims over the past few days and hundreds of people protested in the city on Friday to demand answers.
Sheinbaum and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised before a thorough investigation into what happened would take place.
“A thorough investigation will be conducted … to find out the truth,” Lopez Obrador said dit the day after the incident. “From that, responsibility will be established.”
The Attorney General’s office, its Mexico City counterpart and an external auditor, DNV GL of Norway, are investigating, government officials have reported.
But Sheinbaum has faced questions about whether the subway network has been properly maintained since he 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 workplace in a body shop.
Taking his father’s death certificate, Hernández Juárez said emergency personnel told him his father was crushed below other passengers. “It’s really terrible to see your father this way for the last time,” he told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, some passengers who regularly travel on the line said they had long feared this incident would occur.
“Since it opened, it was scary,” said Maria Isabel Fuentes, a domestic worker at AP on line 12.
But he said that since the metro serves low-income neighborhoods in the capital, it didn’t seem to be a priority. “We’re the same ones we always pay for.”
