English City Bracing for Crash’s Final Impact

Among the bouquets of fresh flowers laid at the entrance to Reading’s central train station Thursday, a sign beseeched: “Come home Daddy. I love you. Claire.”

Whether or not Claire’s daddy survived what may turn out to be Britain’s worst rail crash, Reading woke up to the reality that as many as 50 of its fathers, mothers and other family members who took an express train to London two days earlier might never come home.

Thirty people are confirmed dead and 127 listed as missing in the fiery crash that incinerated rail cars. An additional 150 passengers were injured in the rush-hour collision, many of them suffering serious burns.

The residents of Reading braced themselves to find out how many of the victims were theirs, fully expecting to be the community hardest hit by what has become a national tragedy.

One clue to how many local commuters boarded the ill-fated train to London’s Paddington Station on Tuesday could be found in the station’s parking lot, where dozens of cars remained unclaimed.

Another indicator of the line’s popularity was the number of people who said they usually took that train but just happened to catch an earlier one, or decided to work from home that day in this city west of London.

At the rail station Thursday, men and women awaited their trains nervously and sought out rear cars, such as those that had fared the best in Tuesday’s crash. Passengers on board trains to and from London soaked up newspapers filled with stories about the accident.

In town, there was a sense of foreboding, grief and guilt. Some pubs closed, and flags flew at half-staff. The uncertainty was agony for many; others feared that the facts would ultimately prove to be even more painful.

“By the end of this, it is likely that everyone will know someone who will have been injured or killed,” said the Right Rev. Dominic Walker, the Anglican bishop of Reading. “And the worst thing is that for many there won’t be any bodies. It will be very difficult to mourn without a body.”

Many families of the dead and missing huddled with grief counselors in Reading’s Town Hall and in a bunker-like conference hall at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel to wait for information. Police kept the media well away from them.

Late in the day, police escorted dozens of grieving relatives to the crash site to see the horror. They laid flowers, hugged and wept over the mangled rail cars.

Emergency crews set up a crane capable of lifting 100 tons and began to erect scaffolding around the wreckage so that forensic teams and investigators could get inside.

Forensic experts said it could be days and even weeks before they are able to identify all of the bodies, some of which were reduced to ash in blazes up to 1,800 degrees. They said they would be analyzing wedding rings, tattoos and bits of clothing for some of the dead, dental records and DNA tests for others.

A first-class coach on the express train to London was hit hardest. Only a couple of people are known to have escaped before the 50-seat rail car ignited and disintegrated in the heat.

Rail officials have said the crash occurred when the rookie driver of an outbound Thames Trains service went through a red danger signal and crossed onto the track of the incoming First Great Western Trains service that started in Cheltenham and passed through Reading on its way to London.

The driver, Michael Hodder, died in the crash as he headed home to a suburb of Reading to celebrate his older son’s 7th birthday.

The driver of the other train also was killed.

Officials of the train drivers union have suggested that the cause of the crash lies as much with the signal, which was not clearly visible, as with any driver. The collision occurred on the same stretch of track where a 1997 crash killed seven people and injured 150. Eight other incidents of trains going through red lights have been reported at the signal in question since 1993.

An official investigation was launched Thursday under Lord Cullen, a senior Scottish judge who headed an earlier inquiry into safety on Britain’s oil rigs. Cullen visited the crash site.

Also Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, bowing to a public outcry over the crash, vowed to upgrade rail safety with an automatic train protection system that is estimated to cost $1.7 billion.

Rail companies and the government previously had rejected the system, which prevents trains from going through a red light, as too costly. But Prescott said cost would not be an issue now. He said the rail companies would be made to pay their fair share.

“A billion pounds is not a lot of money in regard to safety,” Prescott said.

Since the privatization of the country’s railroads from 1994-1997, Britons have been complaining that rail companies were skimping on safety to keep profits high.

While Prescott’s announcement was welcomed by train users, it did not seem to diminish public anger at the private rail service, which is expensive, crowded and suffers from frequent breakdowns.

“It’s terrible--you have no real choice apart from catching the train to Paddington,” said Reading commuter Julia Dowdell. “First there was the crash two years ago, and now exactly the same thing happens. Why do people have to keep dying before they’ll do something?”

Moreover, Dowdell said, her annual rail pass from Reading to London is expensive. “It’s a 25-minute journey in which I am always standing. We’re all standing like matches in a matchbox,” she said.

Dowdell, 31, a business analyst, was looking at the flowers and condolence notes placed at the entrance to the Reading train station. She said she normally takes the express train that crashed Tuesday, but just happened to get to the station quickly that day and grabbed a train 10 minutes before her usual service.

“It was just luck. I just got on that much earlier,” she said.

But even the survivors did not feel lucky in Reading. They waited for bad news and prepared to mourn, thinking “there but for the grace of God . . . .”

“We are a town which centers on its railroad,” the Rev. Walker said. “We all use the railway, and we all know it could have happened to us.”

Margaret Chapman of The Times’ London Bureau contributed to this report.