Explosion at major Austrian gas hub: 1 dead, 18 injured

An explosion rocked one of Europe’s biggest gas pipeline hubs in Austria on Tuesday, leaving one person dead and 18 injured, emergency services said.

Photos showed a tower of orange flame roaring out of the Baumgarten facility 50 kilometers east of Vienna near the Slovak border.

“An explosion occurred at 8:45 am, followed by a fire,” police spokesman Edmund Tragschitz told AFP.

He later put the number of people hurt, including one seriously as well as those with minor injuries, at around 60.

But Red Cross spokeswoman Sonja Kellner told the Austria Press Agency that one person had been killed and 18 were injured, one of them seriously who has since been airlifted to hospital in Vienna.

“I heard a huge explosion and thought at first it was a plane crash,” Thomas Hulik, a resident of a Slovakian village, told AFP. “Then I saw an immense ball of flame.”

Armin Teichert, a spokesman for the site’s operator Gas Connect Austria, said that the site had been evacuated and that the facility had been put into “security mode.”

The material damage is “major,” Teichert told AFP.

Police said on social media that people should avoid the area.

Media reports said more than 200 firefighters from brigades in the surrounding area were called in to help, as well as a number of air ambulances.

Lower Austria state police said on Twitter that the situation was “under control.”

“Fire services are currently engaged in putting out the fire following the explosion,” the statement said. “Emergency services are treating the wounded.”

An AFP journalist nearby said that by late morning the flames had been extinguished but there was still a huge cloud of smoke over the site.

Other photos showed the heat from the blast was so extreme that cars parked at the site partially melted.

The Baumgarten gas hub receives 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually and redistributes it in Europe including Germany and northern Italy.