During 2021, the CDMX Metro faced two of the worst tragedies in its 52 years of operation: the fire of the Central Control Post (PCC 1) and the collapse of a part of the elevated viaduct of Line 12.
However, while for what happened on the gold line a web page was enabled with all the information on the construction and maintenance of the line, as well as the opinions made after the tragedy that claimed the lives of 26 people, to know what happened in the “brain” of the Metro -before and after the fire that consumed it on January 9, 2021, including opinions and logs, and even photographs, it is not possible because the Metro Transparency Committee decided to reserve all the information for a period of three years – the maximum period allowed in the local Transparency Law – which coincides with the conclusion of the current administration headed by Claudia Sheinbaum.
What equipment was there and was damaged, the reports of maneuvers, failures and breakdowns of these; the daily work reports, manuals and operating regulations, the instructions for the attention of relevant accidents, the photographs after the accident, the partial opinions and annexes of the fire that consumed the PCC 1, as well as the opinions after the fire are the main documents and records that, although they exist, the Metro authorities decided to reserve.
See also: A year after the fire, the Metro and insurer do not agree on the cost of the damages
As stated in the letter UT/4383/2021 -which received Political Animal in response to a request for transparency – this information cannot be provided because doing so would hinder the work carried out by the Committee for the Investigation of Relevant Incidents of the Metro, this despite the fact that the Attorney General’s Office of the CDMX -although it maintains an open folder for the facts- pronounced 40 days after the incident realizing that -according to its investigations- the fire was due to a short circuit “accidental, fortuitous and unpredictable”.
On February 19, 2021, in a videoconference, experts from the Capital Prosecutor’s Office stressed that the incident was not related to lack of maintenance to the property or equipment, and detailed that although the fire suppression system came into operation, it was not enough due to the magnitude of the fire. As they explained, at the most critical moment of the fire they reached up to one thousand 500 degrees Celsius and the fire spread at full speed burning five of the six floors of the building.
Political Animal requested to know the results of the structural opinion of the damaged building and that the Collective Transport System (STC) contracted on March 8, 2021 -two months after the accident-. According to the contract SDGM-GOM-AD-1-01/21, the Metro paid 4 million 474 thousand pesos to the mercantile company Administradora de Ingeniería del Centro S.A. de C.V. to carry out this work, however, the Legal Management of the Metro, through the transparency unit of the agency, reported that it cannot deliver the results of the structural opinion -or anything related to the fire of the PCC 1-.
Eight pages of different requests for public information that were made after the fire were even provided, specifying that neither what he requested Political Animal -nor what eight other people have asked for- can be delivered because everything is reserved.
The agreement and the reservation
“After the analysis carried out on the requested documents (structural opinion of the damaged building) it was noted that restricted access information is immersed in its confidential modality, since it is part and integrated within the ongoing investigations carried out by the Committee for the Investigation of Relevant Incidents of the Collective Transport System, information reserved in the Third Ordinary Session of the Transparency Committee of the STC held on August 12, 2021,” said Óscar José Cadena Delgado, legal manager of the Metro, in the response of public information that they delivered.
As it is exposed, after the fire in the headquarters building of the Metro where a policewoman lost her life and half of the network was out of service because the electrical substation and other controls were burned, the transparency unit of the agency began to receive various requests for public information which were sent to the corresponding areas to give them answers, however, these same areas requested that the Transparency Committee be convened to proceed to reserve the information by “foto be part of and integrated into the ongoing investigations carried out by the Committee for the Investigation of Relevant Incidents”.
The Metro Transparency Committee met on August 12, 2021 and in the agreement 2021/SO/III/3 was listed all the information that will be reserved until August 2024, -information that must be emphasized- was requested by individuals through eight requests for public information.
In order to avoid continuing to send requests for public information in which details of the Central Control Post are requested before, during and after the fire, the Legal Management of the Metro shared the pages and specific requests that have been made stressing that the information that is not contained within them will be considered as public information.
However, it is enough to review the list provided to confirm that practically all the information related to the Central Control Post – and not only to the fire of January 9, 2021 – is reserved.
For example, in the application that was registered on folio 0325000003221 it is requested to know about the Buen Tono electrical substation -which was where the fire that consumed the central building of the Metro began- the make, model and year of the equipment that integrated it, as well as the maintenance plan (daily, weekly, monthly or annual). As approved by the Transparency Committee, this information must remain reserved for three years.
Read more: Fire at Metro substation leaves one dead and 6 lines without service
Two other applications – registered with different pages – ask for the inventory of the equipment or machines that were necessary for the operation and control of activities, as well as the records of those that were damaged by the fire, but it is also information not available.
Reserved information are also the daily reports corresponding to the maintenance of the fire network systems between 2019 and 2020 and that was requested by an individual and was registered under folio 0325000015921.
Directly on the fire of the PCC 1, different requests for information were entered in which “all the expert opinions and annexes of the explosion in the command center of the Metro” were requested, as well as “all the photographs of all the damaged equipment”. Also the records, logs, reports, fault books or any document issued by the Civil Protection Coordination during the fire of January 9; the information card of attention of the incident, as well as the general report of the incident, but everything has been classified as confidential information.
“This collegiate body approves that the information be reserved for a period of three years, leaving the direction of engineering and technological development and the coordination of legal services, both of the Collective Transport System under the protection of the investigation files of the committee for the investigation of relevant incidents and the investigation folder opened in the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City,” is concluded in agreement 2021/SO/III/3.
It is important to emphasize that in the list of requests made in which information is requested from pcc 1 that was determined will be reserved for a period of 3 years is not the request made by Political Animal on the structural opinion of the damaged building that the Metro contracted after the fire, however, the Legal Management of the agency determined to adhere to the agreement of the Transparency Committee not to provide the results of the opinion in question.
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