33 German tourists die as train hits bus
The Budapest to Nagykanizsa train hit the coach around 8:35am (6:35am Irish time) at a level crossing near Siofok on Lake Balaton, Hungary’s leading tourist area, echoing a similar tragedy at the same place 21 years ago.
The head of the local disaster unit, Gyorgy Heizler, said the coach driver had failed to heed red stop lights. The crossing, like many in Hungary, has no safety barriers.
“The train, which was going at full speed, practically sliced the bus in two and flattened one half, pushing it around 200 metres down the track,” he told a news conference.
Twenty-nine of the day-trippers died on the scene and four in hospital. The other five passengers were injured, three of them seriously.
Parts of one passenger’s body were found among twisted metal from the coach that was wrapped around the front of the train.
Hungary’s national railway chief, Zoltan Mandoki, told reporters at the scene: “A full investigation is underway, but it looks like it is the fault of the bus driver.”
He said 18 people had been killed at the same crossing in a similar tragedy in 1982.
Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, who visited the scene with the German ambassador, said his government would examine whether more safety barriers should be installed at rail crossings.
“This is maybe the most horrific bus accident in Hungary’s history,” he said, adding he had contacted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The bodies of many of the dead, pulled from under the partially derailed train, were laid out by the tracks awaiting identification. Emergency services brought in wooden coffins.
Metal shards, bus seats and wires littered the tracks. Germany said most of the passengers were from the northern states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. They were staying in Siofok, about 100km south-west of Budapest.
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