Train Fire In France Kills 12

A fire broke out on a train in eastern France early Wednesday and filled the sleeping carriage with smoke, killing 12 people and driving panicked passengers to smash windows and jump to safety.

Among the victims were five members of an American family, including two children. The train, like others in Europe, had no smoke detectors, and cigarette smoking is allowed in specially designated cars.

Fatal rail accidents are rare in France, where trains are known for speed, safety and efficiency. Accidents, however, are not unknown in Europe: A high-speed train derailed in Germany in 1998, killing 101 people.

Wednesday's blaze, which injured nine others, was initially blamed on an electrical short-circuit. But the French rail authority SNCF said that such conclusions were premature and the cause was still under investigation.

The owner of the sleeping car, German national railroad Deutsche Bahn, said the fire apparently started in the sleeping compartment of a train attendant and spread from there. Smoke was blamed for the deaths.

The fire began shortly after 2 a.m. as the train with 150 passengers passed through the city of Nancy on its way to the southern German city of Munich, according to SNCF. The train had left Paris three hours earlier.

Among the dead were five Americans — two women, a man, an 8-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl; three German men; a Russian man and woman; a Hungarian man and a Greek woman. Richard Lankford, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Paris, refused to give the American victims' names pending notification of next of kin.

Authorities in Meurthe-et-Moselle prefecture said nine people were injured: four Germans, three Britons, one American and one French national. Officials at Saint Julien Hospital in Nancy said they had treated nine injured, and had discharged all but one by mid-afternoon.

A train worker alerted authorities at about 2:15 a.m. when he noticed smoke pouring from a wagon as the train passed the Nancy station. Flames shot up three yards into the air and the thick black smoke billowed out of the car's windows.

Survivors told reporters of panic inside the train. Screaming passengers escaped by breaking through the car's windows and climbing out once the train had stopped, while those in other cars grabbed their things and ran out the doors.

French survivor Marc Giraud said the smoke filled his compartment after a person in the room opened the door. Then the man grabbed an emergency ladder, smashed the window of the compartment and they crawled out.

"We got out through that mouse hole," Giraud told TF1 television. "I don't know how we got out through there."

Susan Stroembum, who was sleeping in a different car when the fire started, said when she woke up she saw flames from her window.

"Somebody screamed, 'The train is burning,"' Stroembum said Wednesday in Stuttgart's main station, where 55 survivors were met by Deutsche Bahn with complementary food and drink.

Firefighters rushed to the train, which had stopped on a track about 875 yards outside the Nancy station. All of the dead were inside the charred sleeping car, said regional official Jean-Francois Cordet.

"The catastrophe was amplified by the fact that it was in a confined space. The fire was limited, and the amount of smoke very quickly became catastrophic," chief firefighter Jean-Louis Modere said.

Police investigators were on the scene. A team of psychologists was sent in to help survivors cope with the trauma. Officials offered passengers shelter in a local gymnasium.

The charred train car, No. 261, was built in 1964 and underwent extensive renovation in 1999 and an overhaul in 2001, according to Deutsche Bahn spokesman Dieter Huehnerkoch. The company said the car had its last regular technical check on Monday.

Deutsche Bahn said sleeping cars are generally not equipped with fire or smoke detectors, but do have fire extinguishers. Dominique Martin, a spokeswoman for SNCF, said that no trains in France carry smoke detectors. The Amtrak system in the United States makes some use of detectors, and smoking is banned on short-distance routes.

The German railroad was sending experts and two board members to Nancy to take part in the investigation.

Deutsche Bahn marketing chief Hans-Gustav Koch told German TV reporters that the fire probably began in the sleeping car attendant's compartment, and said passengers used emergency hammers and ladders in their quarters to escape.

"We believe that the people who regrettably died were asphyxiated in their sleep," he said.

French President Jacques Chirac expressed condolences for the victims, and said his government was determined "to fight for better prevention of accidents."

French Transportation Minister Gilles de Robien visited the injured at a hospital Wednesday morning, and he told reporters that an investigation was underway.

Louis Gallois, president of SNCF, was also on the scene. SNCF released a statement Wednesday afternoon saying that the fire probably had nothing to do with the age of the 38-year-old car.

Fatal train accidents have hit France in the past. In September 1997, 13 people were killed and 31 others injured when a train in southwestern France burst into flames after crashing into a truck filled with gasoline.

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