Railway accidents

Citation

(1999), "Railway accidents", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308cac.006

Railway accidents

Railway accidents

Keywords Accidents, Railway transport

22 May 1998 ­ Blantyre, Malawi

At least 17 people were killed and 200 injured when a passenger train derailed and overturned outside the city of Blantyre, state radio reported today. The radio broadcast in the capital Lilongwe, said the accident took place early today 10km outside Blantyre. It said only 36 of the injured remained in hospital, where they were receiving treatment. The radio report attributed the accident to faulty brakes, but the Government of President Bakili Muluzi ordered an official investigation to establish the cause of the accident.

3 June 1998 ­ Eschede area, Germany

A high-speed train crashed in northern Germany today killing at least 25 people and injuring 200, railway officials and witnesses said. A local official said up to 30 passengers might have died as the train jumped the tracks at Eschede, north-east of Hanover. Police could not confirm the death toll. A radio reporter at the scene said a car appeared to have fallen from a bridge on to the tracks and caused the accident. Police could not confirm this. The Inter City Express, en route from Munich to Hamburg, normally travels at 200kph. German Railways said 12 carriages left the rails. The two locomotives pulling the train appeared to have passed under the bridge before the impact.3 June 1998 ­ About 60 people were killed when a train crashed in northern Germany today, a local government official said, "There are around 60 dead. That is the current situation," said Klaus Rathert, senior regional director for Celle near Hanover. Rathert said this was the current estimate from doctors and rescue workers at the crash in the nearby town of Eschede. Between 25 and 40 people had been seriously injured, he added.4 June 1998 ­ Rescuers worked with cranes and sniffer dogs today to search for survivors of Germany's worst rail disaster in half a century. Police said they had retrieved 81 bodies. Two more people had died in hospital. Rescue workers expected the toll of 83 to rise above 100, but police spokesman Peter Hoppe said he could not confirm reports that between 100 and 120 people had been killed. At least 30 people were seriously injured after the Inter-City Express crashed. He said there were still two or three rail cars ­ possibly including the restaurant car ­ buried beneath the collapsed bridge and other wreckage the workers had not yet reached. Three 300-ton cranes, which worked under floodlights through the night to try to remove the concrete slabs, lifted one carriage where rescuers found two bodies. Hoppe said the rescue work would take priority. "At the same time an investigation is going on, though not as intensively," he said. Asked about the cause, he said the assumption was that the crash was accidental but added: "We are not ruling anything out." Hoppe said the chances of finding survivors nearly 24 hours after the crash were "very small". He could not confirm reports that a group of schoolchildren was still trapped in the wreckage. The Hanover-Hamburg high-speed train line is expected to be closed for at least two days to clear the wreckage and investigate the cause of the crash. Train ICE 884 was travelling from Munich to Hamburg. Chancellor Helmut Kohl cut short an official visit to Italy yesterday and flew back to Bonn from Bologna. The driver survived because his locomotive uncoupled from the train and passed under the road bridge, rail officials told a news conference at the scene.4 June 1998 ­ The confirmed death toll from modern Germany's worst rail disaster reached 92 today and emergency services said chances of finding more survivors were slim. "We have to establish the precise point at which the derailment was triggered," said Joern Pachl, a transport expert at the Technical University of Braunschweig, who has helped authorities piece together clues from past crashes. "But we've simply got no experience of a derailment at this speed," he told German ZDF television.German Railways said today it was placing temporary speed restrictions on its luxury Inter-City Express trains and carrying out additional safety checks after one was involved in a rail disaster killing at least 92. "All ICEs will be given an additional examination. Until the conclusion of this examination, all ICEs will with immediate effect travel at a maximum speed of 160kph," the rail company said in a statement.5 June 1998 ­ German rescue workers today, prepared to clear away the mangled carriages of a high-speed luxury train that crashed two days ago leaving 95 known dead in Germany's worst post-war rail wreck. Rescue workers toiling under floodlights overnight uncovered a grim scene of barely recognisable corpses crushed in the restaurant car of the train, the final carriage to be removed from the mass of tangled steel and concrete. German railway officials said there was mounting evidence that a damaged wheel caused the country's worst train accident since World War Two. They cited possible material fatigue and did not rule out a deliberate act of sabotage. A rescue committee official said the operation was coming to an end and they did not expect to find any more bodies. "Right now we are presuming that we won't find any more corpses. Certainly we don't expect to find entire bodies, but only body parts scattered about," said Hans-Helmut Schmitz, a spokesman for the rescue committee. Acknowledging the possibility of defect in the train, German Railways ordered 60 of its fleet of sleek Inter-City Express trains to be taken into repair shops for examination, causing long delays during commuter traffic this morning. Federal border guards walked up and down the rail lines carrying blue plastic bags to collect any belongings or valuables from the passengers that may have been thrown out of the train during the crash. The crash of a Hamburg-bound Inter-City Express luxury train, which had 13 carriages, the restaurant car and two locomotives, also left 43 people seriously injured. Railway officials have still not been able to say conclusively how many people were on board the train when it derailed and slammed into a road bridge, which then collapsed, crushing the people inside. Peter Hoppe, a local police official, told Germany's ZDF television that over 200 reports of missing persons had been registered in connection with the accident. Medical examiners also have not been able to positively identify any of the dead recovered from the crash, officials said. Helfried Draeger, a police official from neighbouring Celle, said relatives were not being allowed to view the badly mangled bodies. "We are using traditional methods rather than showing relatives the corpses; that would be quicker but it would not be reliable enough," he told Germany's ZDF television. "We will only ask relatives to identify them when we are certain these are the right ones. We don't intend to confront relatives with the sight." Police have been interviewing relatives in the hope of finding distinguishing marks such as scars, tattoos or other features that could lead to identification, he said. Officials now suspect that a rear wheel on the carriage behind the locomotive broke several miles before the train passed over a switch and derailed. One official said the wheel could have been damaged by something on the railway line or because of material fatigue. German Railways announced it was halting the first generation of the seven-year-old high-speed trains for inspections. "It is possible that a defect on the undercarriage played a role in the crash or was even the cause of the crash," Federal Railways chairman Johannes Ludewig said late yesterday.6 June 1998 ­ Rescuers have completed their work at the site of the German train crash, after finding four more bodies in the wreckage this morning, for a total death toll of 102. A special German Transportation Ministry commission has closed off key areas of the accident site, as specialists probe for the cause of Germany's deadliest railroad accident in 50 years. The investigators say they now suspect wheel failure may have caused train carriages behind the engine to jump the rail and hit the side of an underpass, causing the bridge to collapse on some of the rail cars. The train was moving at about 125 miles an hour at the time of the accident, so fast that the force of the wreck telescoped some of the carriages into each other. German radio reports coroners have officially identified only 21 bodies so far, and have barred relatives and friends from viewing the remains because of their condition. The 759-seat train had been carrying at least 350 passengers at the time of the accident. The German government has ordered a complete investigation of the wheels on all its high-speed trains, and barred them from operating at speeds faster than 100 miles an hour.