Freak train accident kills 6 and injures 16
Men work at the accident site next to a passenger train standing on the rails in Nyberg, Denmark, after the Great Belt Bridge was closed following a railway accident on January 2, 2019.
Cargo falling from a passing freight train is being blamed for a passenger train accident in Denmark that killed six people and injured 16 others.
The accident was the worst in Denmark in more than 30 years.
Danish Railways said the train was going from the city of Odense, on the central Danish island of Funen, to the capital of Copenhagen about 8am.
Authorities said the trains were going past each other in opposite directions.
Aerial TV footage showed one side of the front of the passenger train had been ripped open. Photos showed that the freight train was carrying crates of beer, and the tarpaulin that covered the cargo was torn in pieces.
Police declined to comment directly on a report from TV2 channel that a large freight container had most probably fallen off the cargo train.
“It is much too early to speculate as to what might have caused it,” chief police investigator Joergen Andersen said.
Passenger Jesper Nielsen said the train “was out on the bridge when there was a huge ‘bang’ ... very quickly thereafter, the train braked.”
The accident took place on a road-and-rail bridge, part of the Storebaelt system of bridges and a tunnel that link the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen.
The transport system was closed to cars overnight because of strong winds but trains could pass.
Police spokesman Lars Braemhoej said that while “we do not know precisely what caused the accident,” one possible cause was that cargo from the freight train fell off and hit the passenger train. He added that there was “considerable damage” on the passenger train.
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe said the “terrible accident ... touches me deeply.”
Police urged passengers to contact relatives and tell them if they were safe, and urged people not to share photos or videos of the accident.
Kasper Elbjoern, spokesman for the Danish brewery group Carlsberg, confirmed that a freight train transporting its cargo was involved in the accident.
In 1988, eight people were killed and 72 injured when a train derailed because of high speed near Soroe, west of Copenhagen.
Denmark’s worst train accident occurred in 1919, when an express train collided with a halted train in Copenhagen due to a dispatcher error. A total of 40 people were killed and some 60 were injured.
