(The following Reuters article was posted on the New York Times’ website on May 8.)
SIOFOK, Hungary — At least 30 people died on Thursday when a passenger train plowed into a German tourist coach in central Hungary, slicing it in half and dragging it down the track, police said.
Police spokesman Laszlo Gelencser said the coach was hit by the Budapest to Nagykanizsa train just after 8:30 a.m. (2:35 a.m. EDT) as it crossed a railway line near Siofok on the shores of Lake Balaton, Hungary’s leading tourist area.
Gyorgy Heizler, head of the local disaster unit, said the coach had been carrying 38 passengers. Twenty-eight people were killed in the crash, two died later in hospital, and nine were injured, he said. The driver was among the dead.
‘The train, which was going full speed, practically slit the bus in two and flattened one half, pushing it around 200 meters (yards) down the track,’ Heizler said.
Gelencser said the coach had tried to cross the railway line even though hazard lights had warned of an oncoming train.
‘The scene is just horrible,’ he said.
The bodies of some of the dead, pulled out from under the train, were laid out beside the tracks while emergency services brought in wooden coffins.
Torn bus seats, wiring and debris littered the tracks.
Thirty ambulances and four emergency service helicopters ferried the injured to nearby hospitals.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the passengers were believed to have come from the north German states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, but had no further details.
The German coach travel association said the passengers had booked their trip with travel operator Maxim Reisen in Cloppenburg, northern Germany. That firm had then chartered a coach from Ursel Reisen in Loehne near Bielefeld.
Ursel Reisen confirmed it had been operating the coach, but declined to give details of the passengers other than to say they were of mixed ages.
TOURIST REGION
Emergency service officials told Reuters at the scene they thought the Germans were staying at a hotel in Siofok, around 65 miles southwest of the capital and a popular destination for tourists from Hungary’s ex-communist neighbors.
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, due to visit the scene later on Thursday, expressed his shock.
‘This is maybe the most horrific bus accident in Hungary’s history,’ he said, adding he had contacted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder about the crash.
Last July, 19 Poles were killed and 32 injured in the same part of Hungary when a bus taking them on a pilgrimage to Bosnia plowed into a roundabout and overturned.
In September 1992, 16 German holidaymakers died in a bus crash in Hungary.
Medgyessy said his government would now look into whether more safety barriers should be installed at rail crossings.