At 15:07, the driver leaves the Pernink train station to nearby Nejdek. A few tens of seconds later, he collides head-on with an oncoming train heading for Johanngeorgenstadt, Germany.
“We heard the train honk, about two seconds after the morning sounded, so we wondered if the train crashed. It was like someone throwing a grenade, it exploded,” describes witness Rudolf Holý.
The trains collide about 500 meters from the Pernink train station at a total speed of about a hundred kilometers. The set moving from Karlovy Vary moves back 12 meters after the collision.
Watch TV Nova’s report on preventing further accidents here:
At 3:09 p.m., rescue services receive the first information about the accident. Ten minutes later, several fire brigades arrive at the scene, as does the first rescue helicopter. People from the area help passengers get off the train.
“I got in there, they were already treating someone on the ground. Most of all, there was someone wedged in the driver’s room, there were still three people screaming in pain, I was trying to get there,” the witness of the disaster continues.
Access to the wounded is made more difficult by rescuers. Wrecked trains cannot be reached by car, so they have to walk along the tracks.
“The intervention was difficult because two passenger trains collided in inaccessible and difficult terrain, where we could not reach with fire equipment, so all the removal of the wounded took place on a stretcher at a distance of 500 meters to a kilometer,” explained the commander of the railway fire brigade Petr Truhlář.
Why did the accident happen?
Already during the rescue work, rescuers find that there are two dead on the spot. At 16:18, the rescue of passengers from the train ends and their delivery to the surrounding hospitals continues. The seriously wounded are being taken away by helicopters.
“All four patients from yesterday’s railway accident are hospitalized in a stable condition at the Pilsen University Hospital, even though two of them are in a very serious condition,” said Václav Šimánek, director of the University Hospital Pilsen on Wednesday.
“We are ready to pay compensation and damages as soon as possible,” said Czech Railways spokeswoman Vanda Rajnochová.
At 18:05, the accident investigation begins. “Preliminary damage is estimated at 20 million on train sets, of course, during commission inspections, it may turn out that the damage will be different,” explained Jan Kučera, Inspector General of the Railway Inspectorate.
After nine o’clock in the evening, it gets dark, the lamps light up and the rescue and transport of the destroyed cars to the nearby station in Pernink begins. Traffic on the line was resumed shortly after two o’clock in the morning. However, it will probably take a few more days to remove the second set from the station.
Take a look at the current state of the train in a report from the evening Televizní noviny:
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