NANCY, France, 7 November — A horrific fire on an overnight express train from Paris to Vienna killed 12 people and injured nine early yesterday, making it France’s worst rail accident in five years.
The blaze appeared to have started in an electrical control panel in the sleeper car, owned by the German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn, and spread to two compartments, completely incinerating them, according to local police. Prosecutors said the blaze was most likely accidental, while Deutsche Bahn officials insisted the sleeper car’s heating system was not to blame.
The cause of the blaze was initially identified by French fire-fighters as an electrical fault in the heating system of the 38-year-old carriage. However, Louis Gallois, the head of the French railways, the SNCF, said last night that other theories were being examined, including possible "human causes". A senior German railways official said later that examination of the carriage showed that the fire had definitely not started in the heating system. Christoph Franz also pointed to a "human error".
A preliminary, judicial investigation for possible criminal charges, including manslaughter, was under way last night. An American family of five, including a girl of 12 and a boy of 8, were among those killed — probably through inhaling carbon monoxide and other fumes in their sleep. The other victims were provisionally identified as three Germans, two Russians, a Greek and a Hungarian. Two Britons were treated in hospital for the effect of smoke inhalation and were released last night.
Railway workers saw the flames and smoke pouring from the first carriage of train D261 as it passed through Nancy station at 90 kmph at 2 a.m. yesterday. The overhead electrical current was cut to halt the train, the nightly Paris-Munich-Vienna express. By the time that firefighters reached the train, 700 meters from the station a few minutes later, all the passengers in five sleeping compartments of the blazing carriage were dead.
Nine passengers in the remaining six compartments escaped. A German steward traveling in the stricken carriage told German railway officials that he had woken some of the passengers after smelling smoke. It remained unclear last night why he had been unable to reach the others.
A German passenger in the second sleeping car told the France Inter radio station: "The conductor who was in charge of the (burning) car was in the corridor (of our car), very shocked and in panic, and he said several times in German, ‘I can’t get into my car, my passengers will die’."
Other passengers also spoke of hearing children screaming inside the carriage but fire officers said later that they believed all the victims had died in their sleep. "Anyone who screamed got away," one officer said. (The Independent)
