- Title: GERMANY: RESCUE WORKERS CONTINUE SEARCHING THROUGH WRECKAGE OF DERAILED TRAIN.
- Date: 6th February 2000
- Summary: BRUEHL, NEAR COLOGNE, GERMANY (FEBRUARY 6, 2000) (REUTERS) 1. GV: FIRE BRIGADE SERVICES WALKING ALONG PLATFORM 0.04 2. GV/PAN: TRAIN CARRIAGE ON ITS SIDE, RESTING BESIDE HOUSE, PAN TO WRECKAGE OF CARRIAGES ALONG PLATFORM 0.18 3. GV/CU: WIDE OF SCENE/ EMERGENCY SERVICES (2 SHOTS) 0.27 4. GV: FIRE FIGHTERS WALKING ATOP CARRIAGE (2 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 21st February 2000 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BRUEHL, NEAR COLOGNE, GERMANY
- Country: Germany
- Reuters ID: LVA9NOIPBKTNE2KF6WOBUVTBS4B4
- Story Text: Rescue workers began the hard task of shifting through
wreckage of the derailed train in Cologne, Germany as daylight
reveals the full extent of the destruction.
At least seven people were killed and 100 injured on
Sunday (February 6) when a train plunged off of one of
Europe's busiest railway routes and ploughed into a house near
Cologne in Germany.
Police said they could not rule out finding further bodies
as hundreds of rescue workers sifted through the wreckage of
the train near the small town of Bruehl, south of Cologne.
The cause of the accident is not yet know but the speed of
the train and the black box will be examined said police
spokesman Winrich Granitzka.
The train derailed around midnight (2300 GMT) as it
travelled from Amsterdam to Basle and was diverted from one
track to another because of building work on the line.
The crash was the worst in Germany since the Eschede
disaster of 1998, the country's biggest post-war rail tragedy,
killed 101 people.The head of Germany Railways said an
initial inspection of the site suggested the driver could have
been travelling too fast.
Premier of state of westphalia Wolfgang Clement expressed
his shock after visiting the site of the crash early on
Sunday.
Twenty passengers were hospitalised with serious wounds
out of a total 100 injured, most of them slightly.An elderly
couple in the house escaped unharmed but were in shock.
Police did not give the nationality of those killed but
said the train was carrying some 300 people from across Europe
and the United States.The driver was injured but survived.
Five carriages and the locomotive left the track just
outside Bruehl railway station and two carriages then
plummeted down an embankment into the house, landing in its
living room and front garden.
There have been several minor accidents since Eschede in
June 1998, including one last August in which 40 were injured
when one underground train crashed into another in Cologne.
The Bruehl accident is the latest in a series of recent
serious rail crashes in Europe.
Nineteen people were killed in a blazing wreckage after
two trains collided head-on in southern Norway last month,
while in October two trains collided outside London's
Paddington station, killing 31 people.
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