SCORES KILLED AS GERMAN EXPRESS DERAILS AND BRIDGE COLLAPSES

ESCHEDE, GERMANY, 1998-06-03. — Scores of passengers were killed today when one of Germany’s high-speed InterCity Express trains derailed at Eschede, north of Hanover, and carriages piled into the wreckage of a road bridge. Rescue workers fear that the death toll may approach or exceed 100, but the destruction is so extensive that no reliable final account is yet possible. Many others have been injured, some gravely. The train, travelling from Munich to Hamburg, came off the rails shortly before 11 a.m. in a disaster which has turned a quiet Lower Saxon town into the centre of a vast emergency operation.

The service, ICE 884, named Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, was carrying roughly 300 passengers and travelling at about 200 kilometres an hour, or 125 miles an hour. Its leading power car continued beyond the principal wreckage while coaches behind it were thrown from their course. Several were crushed together at the bridge, whose fallen concrete structure added an enormous weight to the tangled carriages. Other vehicles lay broken or overturned beside the line. The full sequence remains uncertain: investigators must establish where the derailment began, how the coaches struck the bridge and precisely when its supports gave way.

Firemen, police, ambulance crews and troops have joined the effort to reach those trapped inside. Helicopters are carrying casualties to hospitals, while doctors and other medical staff work near the railway to assess injuries and prepare survivors for removal. Cutting equipment and heavy lifting machinery are being brought against the wreckage, but progress is necessarily slow where broken coaches lie beneath concrete. The immediate task is not simply to clear an obstruction. Every movement of metal or masonry must be weighed against the possibility that someone remains alive underneath, beyond the sight and hearing of the rescuers.

Survivors have described a sudden, violent interruption to an otherwise ordinary journey, followed by confusion as passengers tried to understand which parts of the train had been destroyed. Those able to get clear encountered wrecked compartments and people requiring urgent assistance. Residents of Eschede were among the first to help before the full emergency services arrived. Such accounts are essential to the rescue effort, but they cannot yet provide a complete explanation of the accident. Passengers in different coaches experienced different movements, and the separation of the front of the train from the main wreckage has left sharply contrasting scenes along the track.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl has gone to the scene, where the scale of the wreckage confronts the Federal Government with a national calamity. His description of the disaster as a “catastrophe” reflects the shock spreading through a country accustomed to treating its railway as an assurance of technical competence. Political business has been overshadowed by the deaths and by the uncertainty facing passengers’ families. The Government’s immediate responsibilities are to support the rescue, ensure that the injured receive treatment and obtain an authoritative account. Questions of responsibility cannot be settled by the first reports coming from a confused and still dangerous site.

Deutsche Bahn, the railway company, faces the urgent tasks of identifying those aboard, assisting relatives and establishing what happened to one of its principal express services. Information about the missing remains incomplete, and a passenger’s absence from an early casualty list cannot safely be taken as evidence of survival or death. Hospitals and emergency authorities must reconcile names gathered under exceptional pressure. For families waiting for news, the changing estimates of casualties offer little certainty. The railway will also have to account for the train’s inspection and maintenance history, while preserving the records and physical evidence required for a thorough investigation.

The ICE is the most conspicuous expression of Germany’s investment in fast passenger transport. Regular services began in 1991, offering a powerful alternative to domestic air travel and the motorway on important inter-city routes. The white trains, distinguished by their red stripe, have become familiar symbols of a modern national railway. They can operate at speeds above that reported at Eschede, although permitted speeds vary with the route. Today’s accident therefore raises questions extending beyond a single journey: passengers will want to know what safeguards apply when high-speed trains run over existing lines, through junctions and beneath older structures.

The cause has not been established, and the appearance of the wreckage alone cannot distinguish an initiating failure from the damage that followed. Investigators will need to examine wheels and running gear, the condition of the track and points, signalling information and the surviving portions of the bridge. They must also determine whether anything was abnormal before the train reached Eschede. It would be premature to assign blame to the driver, the permanent way or a particular component. A failure lasting only a few seconds may leave evidence scattered over a considerable distance, mixed with destruction caused by subsequent impacts.

The commercial consequences are already plain in the interruption of a major passenger corridor, though there is no sound basis tonight for estimating the financial cost. Deutsche Bahn must arrange diversions and explain what checks are being undertaken without claiming conclusions that the inquiry has not reached. Manufacturers and railway engineers throughout Europe will be watching closely, for high-speed services depend upon public confidence as well as journey times. Germany’s programme belongs to a wider European effort to strengthen rail links between major cities. That policy now faces searching scrutiny, but the facts of this accident must precede any judgement upon the whole system.

As the operation continues, the immediate outlook remains grim. Rescuers are still confronting compartments in which the force of the collision has left little recognisable space, while the number of dead cannot be settled until the wreckage has been searched and the missing accounted for. The line through Eschede will remain a scene of recovery and examination rather than ordinary railway traffic. For tonight, assurances about engineering and promises of an inquiry are secondary to the work beside the fallen bridge. The first obligation is to those who may still be reached, the injured in hospital and the families awaiting a definite answer.