MEXICO CITY — Poorly positioned studs, clear design flaws and poor welding led to a collapse within the capital’s metro system final spring that left 26 folks lifeless and scores injured, the lawyer normal for Mexico Metropolis stated Thursday in releasing the outcomes of a monthslong investigation.
The findings, detailed throughout a information convention, aligned with a number of of the conclusions of a New York Instances investigation, which discovered that poor set up of the metallic studs was central to the lethal Could 3 accident.
The metallic studs had been key to the entire development, making a composite unit between metal beams and concrete slabs. As soon as the studs failed, your entire construction grew to become fatally weakened, ultimately resulting in the collapse.
The studs “connecting the concrete slab with the metallic beams had been misplaced,” stated Ulises Lara López, spokesman for the lawyer normal’s workplace. “Within the sections the place the concrete slabs had been indifferent from the beams, all of the studs had been poorly put in at irregular patterns.”
Such elementary flaws, Mr. Lara stated, couldn’t have been discovered by way of routine inspection or prevented by way of common upkeep.
In releasing her workplace’s findings on Thursday, Legal professional Basic Ernestina Godoy Ramos described the report as “a deep, critical, scientific investigation, carried out by specialists.”
An unbiased report issued earlier this 12 months by the Norwegian danger administration firm DNV additionally discovered critical development errors, together with with the location and welding of metallic studs. Mexico Metropolis’s authorities had employed DNV to look at the causes of the crash.
The crash of the metro has set off political shock waves, implicating a number of the strongest folks in Mexico, together with Overseas Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was the mayor of Mexico Metropolis when the road was constructed.
Mr. Ebrard, in addition to the present mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, are each anticipated to hunt the presidency within the 2024 election.
The metro part that collapsed was constructed by Carso Group, an unlimited conglomerate owned by certainly one of Mexico’s wealthiest and strongest males, Carlos Slim, a detailed ally of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. (Mr. Slim was additionally as soon as a big shareholder of The New York Instances Firm.)
Ms. Godoy stated her workplace would provoke legal proceedings in opposition to folks deemed chargeable for the collapse, though she didn’t establish any particular person. “Simply as our mandate is justice, our precedence has been and can proceed to be the victims,” she stated.