The former director of the Metro Jorge Gaviño (July-2015 to February 2018) was unaware that there was any maintenance manual for Line 12 to follow, at least during his tenure at the head of the Mexico City Collective Transport Service.
The current CDMX local deputy adds that the causes of the collapse have to do with poor design and construction; Regarding the latter, he recalls that after the 2017 earthquake, during his administration an inspection of the columns of the elevated section was carried out where construction deficiencies were found, which was reported to the office of the then head of government, Miguel Ángel Mancera. up to the Senate.
What do you think of the DNV report?
We always privilege maintenance over security because there are different types of maintenance; there is corrective, preventive, predictive. We always did is to give maintenance, because we had few resources, to security issues.
After the 2017 earthquake, a column was affected and it is very rare that the columns that carry a girder of that size are affected because they are left over, it was affected, it was checked and it was seen that it was missing steel, that it was missing the straps that tie all the rods (…) after the earthquake column 69 was affected, then we realized that it had a deficient construction process.
After finding the serious fault, who else was informed of the fact?
The Metro Board of Directors was informed; to relevant accidents of the System, to the head of Government, to the Senate by trade, it came out in the media (…) this was a situation that emerged after the earthquake and we thought that there was no more.
Was there a history of any anomaly in the construction?
Of course not. That line (…) was born very badly, it was built badly; before the inauguration a kilometer of tracks had to be changed, only with the pure evidence of the passing of the trains had the track been affected, before the inauguration, this is documented.
After learning of the failure, shouldn’t more in-depth studies of the L12 be carried out?
Well, no, what I found was a damaged column and I checked all of them with ultrasound, everything is published.
DNV indicates that it had no evidence of maintenance according to the manual that should be quarterly or annual…
There is no published manual, there is a pseudo manual, let’s put it that way.
The document that I reviewed from DNV does not show any specific situation that was not done or was done wrong within the administration that I was; The document speaks very generally.
Let’s assume that these friends are right without reviewing, ok, there was a lack of maintenance, it would have fallen, no, it fell because the design failed, in that all the opinions coincide.
Is there no maintenance manual then?
There is a manual that they began to say existed and was signed by (Enrique) Horcasitas (former director of the Metro Project), which is not signed by him, only his name is there and I really didn’t even know it. That manual is a mea culpa that should be reviewed from a legal point of view because that manual is outrageous; says that every three months you have to be checking the columns that do not move, because that is a constructive fault.