Kaprun disaster

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The white funicular train is waiting at the valley station. It enters the tunnel where the fire occurred after the short open-air section on the trestles. The tunnel entrance is just visible as a black dot at the end of the trestles.

The Kaprun disaster was the result of a fire that occurred in an ascending railway car in the tunnel of funicular train "Gletscherbahn 2" in Kaprun, Austria, on November 11, 2000. The disaster claimed the lives of 155 people, leaving only 12 survivors from the burning car. The victims were skiers on their way to the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier.

1 The train
2 The disaster
- 2.1 Casualties & aftermath
3 External links

[edit] The train

The train, the Gletscherbahn 2, was a funicular railway running from Kaprun to the Kitzsteinhorn, opened in 1974. This railway had the unusual track gauge of 946 millimeters, and a length of 3900 meters, of which 3300 meters was through a tunnel. There were two separate train carriages in two lanes, one of which would carry skiers up the mountain while at the same time the other would descend down the mountain. The carriages each had a capacity of up to 180 passengers. The tunnel led to a terminal in the main reception centre, called the Alpine Centre.

[edit] The disaster

On November 11, 2000, about 160 passengers boarded the funicular train for an early morning trip to the slopes. After the passenger train ascended into the tunnel shortly after 9:00am, the electric heater in the unattended driver's cabin at the lower end of the train caught fire, due to a design fault. The fire melted through plastic pipes carrying flammable hydraulic fluid from the braking system, and the resulting loss of fluid pressure caused the train to halt unexpectedly (this was a standard safety feature). The train driver, who was in the cabin at the upper end of the train (which was the front, since the train was ascending), quickly realised a fire had broken out, reported it to the control centre, and attempted to open the hydraulically operated train doors, but the system pressure loss prevented them from operating. The train driver then lost contact with the control centre because the fire burned though a power cable running the length of the track, causing a total blackout.

The passengers, by this stage aware of the fire and unable to exit through the doors, attempted to smash the break-resistant acrylic glass windows in order to escape. A number of passengers from the rear of the train who successfully broke a window followed the advice of a passenger with who had been a volunteer fire fighter for 20 years, and travelled downward past the fire and below the smoke.

Many of the still-trapped occupants had by now lost consciousness due to toxic fumes. Eventually, the driver was able to unlock the doors, allowing them to be manually forced open by the remaining conscious passengers who spilled out into the tunnel and fled upwards and away from the fire. Unfortunately, the tunnel acted like a giant chimney, sucking oxygen in from the bottom and rapidly sent the poisonous smoke, heat and the fire itself billowing upwards. All the passengers ascending on foot, as well as the train operator, were asphyxiated by the smoke or burned to death.

Three people in the Alpine Centre located at the top end of the track 2500 metres away were also asphyxiated by the deadly fumes rising from the tunnel. Two fleeing workers in the Alpine Centre, upon seeing the smoke, escaped via an emergency exit. They mistakenly left the exit doors open, a factor which increased the chimney effect within the tunnel by allowing air to escape upwards more quickly and further intensifying the fire. The driver and the sole passenger on the railway's second train, which was descending the mountain in the same tunnel from above the burning carriage, also died of smoke inhalation.

The twelve survivors of the disaster were the passengers from the train who travelled downhill past the fire at the rear of the train, escaping the upward-rising fumes and smoke.

Nearly one year after the fire, the official inquiry determined the cause was the failure, overheating and ignition of one of the electric heaters installed in the driver's compartments that were not designed for use in a moving vehicle. A slow leak of highly flammable hydraulic oil was ignited by the burning heater, which in turn melted the plastic fluid lines further feeding the flames, and also resulting in the hydraulic pressure loss which caused the train to stop and the doors to fail.

[edit] Casualties & aftermath

The funicular was never re-opened after the disaster and was replaced by another gondola lift, a 24-person Gletscherjet 1 funitel. The stations were abandoned and the tunnel sealed, and it remains unused today. The victims of the disaster included:

On February 19, 2004, Judge Manfred Seiss acquitted all 16 suspects on trial in the disaster. All suspects - including company officials, technicians and government inspectors - were cleared of criminal negligence. Judge Seiss said there was insufficient evidence to find the suspects responsible for the conditions that led to the blaze.