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32 die as train hits tourist bus
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- At least 32 German tourists were killed in Hungary when their double-decker bus was sliced in two by a passenger train and a portion of the bus dragged 150 yards down the track, police said. The coach was crossing the tracks near Siofok on the shores of Lake Balaton, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Budapest, when the accident took place shortly before 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) Thursday, police spokesman Laszlo Gelencer told Reuters. Gyorgy Heizler, head of the local disaster unit, told reporters that the bus was carrying 37 passengers. Twenty-nine people were killed in the crash and three died later in hospital. Another eight people remained hospitalized. The train conductor was the only person on the train who was injured, suffering slight head injuries, according to Hungarian media reports. Engineer Istvan Galos told The Associated Press: "I've never seen anything like it in my life ... There were limbs hanging out of the smashed windows of the bus." Survivors of the crash said one of the passengers shouted at the bus driver that the rail crossing's hazard lights were blinking -- indicating a train was coming -- but the driver did not stop. The intersection did not have a barrier to prevent traffic from crossing. The Hungarian Railway Authority said the lights at the railway crossing were working and had signaled the presence of an oncoming train. Twisted heaps of steel were scattered more than 200 yards and one shredded chunk of the bus sat off to the side of the tracks. About 150 yards away, a crumpled section of the bus was wrapped around the front of the locomotive. The train, which was traveling between Budapest to Nagykanizsa, was carrying mostly older tourists from the northern states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's Foreign Ministry told Reuters. Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy called the crash was one of the country's "all-time worst traffic accidents," AP reported. Medgyessy said he had telephoned German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to express his condolences.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, but authorities are focusing on the actions of the bus driver for failing to stop. Galos said he saw two buses approaching the rail crossing. The first bus went over the tracks while the warning lights were flashing white, he said, but the second crossed as the lights were already flashing red. "There was an enormous crashing sound when the train hit the bus and I saw parts of the bus flying out in the air.... The train blew its whistle twice to warn the bus, but the train was not able to stop in time," Galos said. Zoltan Mandoki, the head of Hungary's national railways, told reporters at the scene that it appeared the coach had tried to cross the railway line despite hazard lights warning of an oncoming train. But Peter Nagy of TV-2 Hungary told CNN: "Originally people at the scene were saying the lights at the crossing were not working.... At the moment, we do not know how and why the bus got there." Hungarian news agency, MTI, said the bus was stuck in a traffic jam, stopped at the railway crossing and the train ran into it. A team of 30 ambulances and four emergency service helicopters took the injured to nearby hospitals. Nagy said calls have been made in Hungary for physical barriers to be added at railway crossings, in addition to the lights, to prevent the "numerous" accidents involving vehicles trying to cross. It is the second fatal bus crash by the lake inside a year. Nineteen Polish pilgrims died when their bus overturned last July. (Full Story)
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