1 Dead, 57 Hurt in Train Crash at Paris Station

A four-car passenger train with what the driver said were faulty brakes slammed into the buffer at the end of a track in a crowded Paris station Saturday, killing one person and injuring 57 others in the city’s second fatal rail wreck in six weeks.

Officials said firefighters worked for nearly four hours to free nine seriously injured passengers who were trapped in the train’s mangled front car.

All the travelers riding the train to the Gare de L’Est station were believed to be French.

“The problems started when I entered the Gare de L’Est,” railway sources quoted the driver as saying. “The brakes did not respond to the commands.”

Paris Firefighting Service spokesman Raoul Viger placed the final casualty toll at one dead, nine seriously injured and 48 others slightly hurt, including the engineer.

There was a tremendous bang and a cloud of smoke went up,” said a railway worker at the scene. “People started running all over the station. Passengers were trying to climb out of carriage windows.”

56 Killed in June Accident

On June 27, 56 people were killed and 32 others were injured at the Gare de Lyon station when a passenger train slammed into another train that was boarding passengers. That collision also was blamed on brake failure.

In the latest crash, the train arrived from Chateau-Thierry, 50 miles northeast of Paris, at a speed of 20 m.p.h., said an official of the state-run SNCF railroad company.

“The train braked well at first when it came into the station,” he told the French Central News Agency. “But the second time on the approach to the buffer the braking did not function,” he said.

About 200 firefighters, doctors and ambulance workers raced to the station after Paris Police Chief Jean Paolini activated a special “red alert” emergency plan.