Train crash in Germany kills at least 10, injures 80
BAD AIBLING, Germany — Crews using helicopters and boats rescued dozens of people from the wreckage of two German commuter trains that crashed head-on Tuesday in an isolated part of Bavaria, killing at least 10 and leaving authorities trying to determine why multiple safety measures failed.
The trains crashed on a stretch of track running between a river and a forest about 40 miles southeast of Munich. Though the first rescue crews were on the scene in minutes, it took hours for all survivors to be airlifted and shuttled by boat across the river to waiting ambulances.
Nine people were reported dead immediately while a tenth died later in a hospital, police spokesman Stefan Sonntag said. The two train engineers were thought to be among the dead and one person was still missing.
“The missing person is in the part of the train where there’s little hope of finding anyone alive,” Sonntag said. “This is the biggest accident we have had in years in this region.”
Investigators called off their search through the rubble after night fell, but Sonntag said they would resume at first light.
Two black boxes have been recovered and are being analyzed, which should show what went wrong, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
“We need to determine immediately whether it was a technical problem or a human mistake,” he said, adding that crews are still searching for a third black box.
The two trains were supposed to pass one another at a station where the track was divided, and a safety system installed on much of Germany’s labyrinthine rail network was supposed to automatically brake trains that end up on the same track heading toward each other, authorities said.
Th e two trains slammed into one another on a curve, meaning that their engineers wouldn’t have seen each other until it was too late.
Dobrint said the black box data will show whether there was a signal from the automatic braking system, and if so, why the trains didn’t brake until too late.
German police would not comment on a local media report citing an anonymous source that authorities believed human error might be at fault.
“Everybody is at a loss right now,” said Christian Boettger, an expert on Germany’s train system who works at Berlin’s University of Applied Sciences.
“Trains are the safest means of transportation,” he said. “There are so many security measures in place in this system that the crash is ... mysterious.”