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About 170 people dead in Austrian train fire |
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November 12, 2000
VIENNA (AP) - A train transporting skiers to an Austrian Alpine resort caught fire deep inside a mountain tunnel Saturday, trapping passengers inside and killing about 170 people, the provincial governor said. Many of the dead were children, local media reported. Salzburg Gov. Franz Schausberger told reporters in Salzburg that only eight people managed to save themselves from the burning car, which apparently was full to its capacity of about 180 people. State radio said the survivors managed to push out a rear window of the flaming compartment. The train, pulled by cable through a tunnel for most of the more than 3,200 meters (yards) up the Kitzsteinhorn mountain to the ski slopes, was reportedly stopped about 600 meters (yards) inside the tunnel. Rescuers were unable to reach the train compartment where fire broke out at about 9:30 a.m. State television said without attribution that the massive steel cable pulling the cars up the slopes apparently snapped before the fire broke out. The blaze kept burning for more than three hours, sending smoke spewing out from the bottom of the tunnel, said Norbert Karlsboeck, the mayor of Kaprun, the town at the base of the track. The area is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Vienna in the heart of the Austrian Alps. Among the dead were three people who were not in the burning train but in a passenger area within the tunnel, Schausberger said. He said they died of smoke inhalation. Details on the passenger area were not immediately available. The tragedy appeared to be the most serious ever involving cable-driven ski transportation. In 1976, 42 people died after a cable snapped at the Italian ski resort of Cavalese. A massive rescue operation was mounted with some 13 helicopters, teams of police, doctors and Red Cross workers all at the site, the mayor said. Helicopters also were making their way from neighboring Bavaria, in southern Germany, carrying firefighters with special equipment. "We do not know anything about the reason for the fire, only that it broke out on the train," Karlsboeck said. The Kitzsteinhorn resort is a popular summer and early winter skiing area. Built in 1974, the cable railway was first the first of its kind to burrow through a mountainside. Experts interviewed on television said it was supposed to be fireproof. Police were calling on motorists to keep away from the area so as not to hinder rescue attempts. Schausberger declared a day of mourning for Salzburg province, and Austrian President Thomas Klestil expressed condolences to relatives.
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