Friday, February 24, 2012

Today’s Video: One Street, Two Tragedies

We'll be back over the weekend to look at several news stories from the Americas that took place over the past week.

One of the biggest headlines from the past few days was the train crash in Buenos Aires on Wednesday that killed fifty-one people and injured over 670.

In December 2004 another tragedy took place near the site of Wednesday's accident: the fire at the República Cromañón nightclub. A portion of the Bartolomé Mitre Street was subsequently closed after a makeshift memorial was built in honor of the 194 concertgoers who died in the Cromañón blaze. Yet it was claimed in a few Argentine press articles that closing the one-block stretch impeded the quick access of rescuers and emergency services to the Once train station.

In the aftermath of the accident Buenos Aires authorities announced that they would reopen the closed part of Mitre Street to traffic and relocate the memorial. Some relatives of the victims of the Cromañón fire were not pleased with the decision such as one who asked the local press "Why don't they show some respect and search for those still missing in the crash?"

On Friday afternoon local officials and some of the victims' families of the Cromañón fire reportedly reached a compromise. The temporary monument would remain undisturbed while a new parallel road would be created that would allow for vehicular traffic.

Is the creation of the new road next to Mitre Street a fair and just resolution or a problematic solution? We'll let you judge for yourselves with the help of the following video from Argentina's Noticias C5N:

Video Source - YouTube via c5n

Online Sources - BBC News, The Latin Americanist, Buenos Aires Herald, Todo Noticias, La Razon, Diario Panorama

No comments: