Portal:Disasters/Selected anniversary/June 2007
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The Eschede train disaster was the world's worst high-speed train disaster. It happened on 3 June 1998, near the village of Eschede in the district of Celle, Lower Saxony. The toll of 101 dead and 88 injured surpassed the 1971 Dahlerau train disaster as the deadliest accident in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Car number 4 derailed by the violent deviation of car number 3 and still travelling at 200 km/h (125 mph), passed intact under the bridge and rolled onto the embankment immediately behind it. Three DB railway workers who had been working near the bridge were killed instantly when the derailed car crushed them. The tearing of the wagon hitches caused automatic brakes to engage and the mostly undamaged cars 1 to 3 (as well as the front locomotive) came to a halt at the Eschede train station, some three kilometers (two miles) down the track. As the second half of car number 5 passed under the bridge, the bridge collapsed and fell on the car, flattening it completely. The remaining cars jackknifed into the rubble in a zig-zag pattern as the collapsed bridge had completely obstructed the track: Cars 6 and 7, the service car, the restaurant car, the three first class cars numbered 10 to 12, and the rear locomotive all derailed and slammed into the pile. The resulting mess was likened to a partially collapsed folding ruler. An automobile was also found in the wreckage. It belonged to the three railway technicians and was probably standing on the bridge before the accident.
The train driver did not notice the trailer loss itself; instead he was interpreting the automatic brakes and missing control lamps as an electric error. While checking on standard procedures for this case in the power head, the station manager informed him of the situation ("You passed through alone! You're derailed!") The driver fell into a seat in shock and was unable to leave the power head for hours.
The crash made a sound that witnesses later described as "startling", "horribly loud", and "like a plane crash". Nearby residents, alerted by the sound, were the first to arrive at the scene. At 11:02, the local police declared an emergency; at 11:07, as the magnitude of the disaster quickly became apparent, this was elevated to "major emergency" and at 12:30 the Celle district government declared "catastrophe emergency" (civil state of emergency). More than 1000 rescue workers from the regional emergency services, fire departments, rescue services, police and army were dispatched. Some 37 emergency physicians, who happened to be attending a professional conference in nearby Hanover, also gave their assistance in the early hours of the rescue effort.
While many passengers and the driver survived in the front part of the train, there was almost no chance of survival in the rear carriages, which crashed into the concrete bridge pile at 200 km/h. Including the three railway workers who had been standing under the bridge, 101 people died. ICE 787 was passing the bridge in the opposite direction (on route from Hamburg to Hannover) only two minutes earlier.
