High-Speed Train Derails in Germany; 100 Killed

Hurtling with a momentum that piled train cars one atop another in twisted heaps of steel, Germany’s fastest passenger train derailed and jackknifed Wednesday when the lead locomotive broke loose. State officials said at least 100 people were killed.

Traveling at 125 mph, car after car slammed into the pylons of an overpass, bringing the bridge crashing down on the wreckage. Dazed survivors staggered with bloodied hands toward residents who came running out of houses just 150 feet away, protected by an embankment.

The Munich-to-Hamburg train, carrying mostly businesspeople, was nearing the Eschede station in northern Germany at the time of the midmorning crash. Passengers felt a rattle, then soon afterward, the jarring impact, one survivor said.

“I held on and ducked down because you had the feeling you’d be thrown through the air, and then, thank God, it came to a standstill,” Wolf-Ruediger Schliebener, a passenger from a rear car, told SAT 1 TV.

“Then I saw in the distance to the front where all the cars were chaotically lying all over.”

The locomotive driver, oblivious to the catastrophe behind him, kept driving through the small train station at Eschede, 35 miles northeast of Hanover.

The stationmaster finally hit the emergency brakes, bringing the engine to a halt more than a mile from the overpass.

The cause of Germany’s worst train accident since World War II remained unclear late Wednesday. Authorities were unsure how many people were aboard Inter-City Express 884, and casualty tolls varied throughout the day.

Lower Saxony state officials said that at least 100 people were killed and at least 300 were injured.

But rescue coordinators reported 40 injured. Police at the scene said 90 people had been hurt.

Police spokesman Joachim Lindenberg said 73 bodies had been recovered and three more located. Searchers were certain that they would find more bodies in two coaches still buried beneath the collapsed overpass, he said.

The accounting of dead and injured was hampered by the severity of the mangled mess.

Rescue workers picked through the wreckage with a crane and pried open the metal siding with blowtorches. Survivors were found among the tangle, including a 10-year-old girl pulled from the wreckage 1 1/2 hours after the crash.

All 12 cars and the rear engine either derailed or smashed into one another, and splintered glass covered the ground. Screams rang out from the wounded; survivors wandered through the wreckage, some carrying luggage.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl, informed of the tragedy after arriving in Bologna, Italy, for meetings with Prime Minister Romano Prodi, appeared shaken by the news and cut short his visit.

The account of the lead locomotive decoupling, given by chief regional rescue coordinator Klaus Rathert at a news conference, conflicted with earlier reports suggesting that an auto had plunged into the train from the overpass.

Police said an auto was crushed beneath the wreckage but that it was unclear where the car was parked at the time of the accident.

The accident was the worst on Germany’s ICE line, inaugurated in 1991 and prized for both its speed and safety. Carrying 65,000 passengers daily, ICE trains travel at speeds up to 175 mph--slightly slower than the Japanese bullet trains’ top speed of 185 mph.

The fastest U.S. trains hit speeds of 125 mph as they run between New York and Washington, Amtrak said.