ICE accident in Eschede:A catastrophe and its consequences

On June 3, 1998, the worst train accident in the Federal Republic to date occurs in Eschede, with 101 dead and 105 injured. The reconstruction of a catastrophe - and how those responsible at the time assess their behavior today.

The ICE 884 "Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen" starts in Munich on the morning of June 3rd. At around 10:30 a.m., the train stops in Hanover for the last time, as scheduled. When the Intercity Express left for Hamburg at 10:33 a.m. this Wednesday, there were almost 300 people on the train. 25 minutes later, not far from the district town of Celle, a wheel tire on the third axle of the first car broke - at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour.

Broken wheel tire triggers devastating chain reaction

This iron ring is pulled over the wheel like the rubber tire of a car. It should increase driving comfort and keep maintenance costs low. After the wheel tire broke at a speed of 200 km/h, the soft iron alloy unwound from the wheel in fractions of a second, drilled through the floor of the high-speed train into the interior of the carriage and wedged itself between the rows of seats and the carriage's rotating frame. One end of the broken and bent metal ring protrudes from the underside of the train and repeatedly hits the track bed. The metal is already leaving clear marks on the concrete sleepers from km 56.4.

Just before Eschede, passengers hear a rumble in the ICE

After the accident, survivors say they noticed a constant rumble before hitting the bridge. When the train finally crosses the first of two switches around 200 meters before the bridge, the wheel tire, which is still wedged, tears part of the switch off the sleepers. It bores through the wagon and lifts it off the tracks. The collision with the second set of points switches them over, the rear part of the wagon races onto a siding. The wagon turns at high speed and finally jumps off the tracks. At this point, the wagon is just before a road bridge that crosses the rails.

The express train turns into a pile of rubble

The spun end of the car hits a pillar of the concrete bridge, causing it to collapse. While the fourth wagon shoots through under the collapsing bridge and finally lands on the embankment to the right of the tracks, the fifth wagon is buried by the collapsing bridge. The following wagons push together like an accordion. ICE 884 stands still just 3.6 seconds after the bridge collapsed. The high-tech flagship of Deutsche Bahn has become a deadly heap of rubble. The ICE accident in Eschede is still one of the world's worst accidents involving high-speed trains.

Residents from Eschede are the first to arrive at the scene of the accident

The first helpers at the scene of the accident are local residents who are startled by the noise of the disaster. "It sounded as if a truck was tipping stones some distance away," a local resident later described the noise. Ten minutes after the accident, the emergency services set off a major alarm. The Federal Border Police and the medical organization of the German Red Cross are alerted.

A desperate rescue operation begins within the next 120 minutes. The air ambulance service is requested, and the technical relief organization is called in. The district of Celle triggers a disaster alarm. Emergency doctors from the Celle hospital are requested. Colleagues who happen to be attending a trauma surgeons' congress at the Hannover Medical School that day come to their aid later.

Big alarm:1,000 helpers on site after a short time

British soldiers move up from a neighboring barracks to help with the rescue. Two casualty collection points will be set up. Around 1 p.m., all the seriously injured people who have been recovered have been transported away. At this point, more than 1,000 helpers are already at the scene of the accident. In retrospect, the conditions for the rescue are described as good. It is bright and the spatial conditions offer sufficient space for the use of rescue helicopters and heavy recovery equipment. "We couldn't have saved a single life," summed up one of the emergency doctors after the operation. Nevertheless, the death toll continues to rise. By the end of the week, 98 bodies have been recovered.

The hope of finding survivors is fading

A total of almost 2,000 helpers will work doggedly at the scene of the accident for three days and nights. But already on the first night after the catastrophe, there is little hope of rescuing survivors from the rubble. The mission is increasingly focused on recovering the dead. Corpse dogs are designed to find body parts. A team of 120 forensic experts has been busy for weeks sorting body parts and identifying the victims.

Rescue and search for clues:Puzzle for helpers and investigators

At the same time, helpers are looking for personal items such as purses or notebooks to find out who was actually on the train. Employees from the public prosecutor's office, the police and the Federal Railway Authority take up the investigation. After the accident, the cause of the accident is initially speculated. Two signal workers, who were also killed, had parked their car on the bridge where the express train was rushing. After the collision, the car is discovered in the wreckage of the train and bridge. Did a car on the tracks derail the ICE? In fact, the first indications of the catastrophe can already be found around six kilometers before the accident site.

The catastrophe is looming kilometers from Eschede

At kilometer 55.1, a notch about 20 centimeters long and about four centimeters deep in a concrete sleeper marks the spot where the wheel tire that triggered the disaster broke. On the following kilometers to the scene of the accident, damage to the sleepers is evident, where the lower end of the bent wheel tire repeatedly hit the ground before the catastrophe finally occurred at the points just before the road bridge.

Fateful delay allows second ICE to pass

Just under two minutes before the ICE 884 "Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen" derailed and crashed into the bridge, the ICE 787 "Werdenfelser Land" passed the scene of the accident in the opposite direction. While the ICE 787 coming from Hamburg runs one minute ahead of schedule, the accident train is one minute late. According to the timetable, the two high-speed trains would have met at the scene of the accident in Eschede. If it hadn't been for this little unpunctuality - the scale of the catastrophe would have been even worse.

Years of stress and agony for the emergency services

But even so it is a misfortune that brings the victims of the accident and their families to the edge of the bearable - and also the emergency services. "At first I hugged my children very hard at home, my wife too," reports a helper shortly after his assignment in a shaky voice. "And then tried to sleep - but couldn't." Many wonder if they've done enough - sleep disorders, anxiety and depression are the result.

The images of the accident are burned deep into the memory of the helpers - to this day. "When looking for victims, we went through all the wagons again," recalls firefighter Michael Besoke in the NDR documentary talk format "Die Scar". He is one of the first helpers on site and lives just 200 meters from the scene of the accident. And in his search for more victims, he comes across a woman and her child. "They were already dead. The woman was squeezed in between all these wagon parts. And the child, I don't know, that was in another compartment or in a toilet - anyway, the woman reached in there, reached for this child. This picture I keep thinking about it. I can't get it out of my head either."

"This accident could have been prevented"

Annette Angermann lost her brother in the train accident. She still watches videos with her brother today. One has a very special meaning for her:"Because it's the only place where I can still see my brother in motion before he was killed in Eschede," she says. "Killed because I believe this accident could have been prevented. And the 101 dead could have lived."

Criminal case is dropped

A criminal case against three engineers, opened four years after the accident in Celle, is to clarify whether the accident could have been prevented. The charges are 101 counts of negligent homicide and 105 counts of negligent bodily harm. "The victims are not primarily concerned with a heavy sentence for the accused," said Reiner Geulen, lawyer for the joint plaintiffs. "They want to establish Deutsche Bahn's guilt. Deutsche Bahn hasn't admitted it to this day."

The pivotal point in the process is the condition and maintenance of the broken wheel tyre. But after eight months and more than 50 days of trial, the court dropped the proceedings against the payment of a fine of 10,000 euros each. The public prosecutor's office would have preferred to see a verdict - however, the accident is assessed as unexplainable. No serious guilt could be proven against the accused.

The railway needs 15 years for an apology

Victims and families are shocked. As well as the years of behavior of the web. The then Bahn boss Johannes Ludewig drove to Eschede on the evening of the accident. But words of regret or even apologies do not come from him. Even on the fifth, even on the tenth anniversary of the accident, there is no apology from Deutsche Bahn. For some relatives, the grief turns to anger. The behavior of the railway keeps the wounds of the bereaved open, they say. "An opportunity for reconciliation, pacification was given away," said family spokesman Heinrich Löwen at the commemoration in 2008.

Only 15 years after the catastrophe did Rüdiger Grube succeed in doing what two railway bosses before him could not bring themselves to do. "We want to apologize to you for the human suffering that has arisen," said the then CEO of Deutsche Bahn at the commemoration in 2013.

Ludewig gives in:"Would do it differently today"

And how do those responsible from back then answer the question of how to behave appropriately in the face of an accident that killed 101 people? "Are the rules that applied at the time not followed? That had to be clarified first. Of course, many people didn't have the patience to wait and see," explains ex-Bahn boss Ludewig the silence of the railway in 1998. "That was just one legal assessment that if one were to issue an apology, that could be interpreted as an admission of guilt in a legal sense as well." But he also sees the moral level - and would deal with the situation differently today:"I do believe that the railways had some kind of responsibility in this moral sense. That's why apologizing would have been in place. That is definitely one of the things I would do differently today than I did then."

Mehdorn remains cool and distant in the face of Eschede

Hartmut Mehdorn succeeds Ludewig in 1999 as CEO of Deutsche Bahn. He is now responsible for coming to terms with the accident - there will be no apologies during his term of office either. On NDR television he now expresses his attitude for the first time since leaving as head of the railways in 2009. "It's hard to empathize with other people's pain. It's very depressing, there's no question about that," he says. But also:"For me it was always clear that you have to keep the emotional and the business separate. But you always have to do that when you are responsible for a large company. There are always individual fates, big and small - and they have to still make sure they don't go crazy themselves or lose their sleep."

From today's perspective, could he understand the anger of the relatives and their need for an apology? "There was no outright failure. If it helps that an apology is paid lip service, it's not worth very much. An apology has to come from the heart."