On 17 October 2006 at 9:37am local time (07:37 UTC), one Rome Metro train ploughed into another train as it unloaded passengers at the Vittorio Emanuele underground station in the city centre, killing a 30-year-old Italian woman, named Alessandra Lisi, and injuring about 145 others,[1] of which a dozen were reported to be in life-threatening conditions.
The whole Line A was immediately shut down and the area above the station, the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, was cordoned off by police as rescue workers erected a field hospital, where dozens of people were treated. The injured were gradually transported to various Rome hospitals for further treatment, with the Complesso Ospedaliero San Giovanni - Addolorata, being the nearest, receiving most of them.
While no official cause of the accident has been released, officials excluded terrorism as a cause for the incident. Several passengers reported that the driver of the moving train failed to stop at a red signal and that the train had been running strangely at previous stations. A senior driver disclosed that the moving train had previously had braking problems on a test drive.[2]
A possible explanation of the accident may lie in a misunderstanding between the driver and the control centre, which would have authorized the train to proceed to the "next station", meaning a station closed to the public (Manzoni), the last before Vittorio Emanuele station, while the driver would have understood it to mean the next working station, that is, Vittorio Emanuele itself.[3]
41°53′41″N 12°30′17″E / 41.89460°N 12.50463°E / 41.89460; 12.50463
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‡ indicates railway accidents resulting in at least 20 deaths | |
