Meanwhile, the clean-up work continued at the scene of the accident. A wagon was cut up on Sunday and half of it was removed, as a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn (DB) said. The derailed cars have to be dismantled so that they can even be driven off the road with low-loaders.
A spokesman for the Oberbayern Süd police headquarters said on Sunday that everyone who had been reported missing since Friday afternoon was now known where they are. As of Saturday afternoon, seven people were still missing.
Five people died in the train accident on Friday near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Initially, numerous people were also missing because the more than 40 injured people had been taken to various hospitals and it was also still unclear whether other people were under the overturned car were.
With a special crane and other heavy equipment, the emergency services were at work on Sunday. In addition, the investigation into the causes continued: why did the train derail? A Soko “train” has been working on reconstructing the accident since Friday, the police said. The management lies with the public prosecutor’s office in Munich II. The investigators are supported by experts.
Fatalities identified
The identification of the five fatalities was largely completed on Sunday. According to the police, there are three women aged 32, 39 and 70 and, according to previous knowledge, a 51-year-old. The fifth victim recovered on Saturday is a teenage boy. One of the more than 40 people injured is still in critical condition. The injured were taken to ten hospitals, including to Austria.
The car, which was cut up by an excavator and transported on a low-loader on Sunday, is one of three that overturned in the accident. On Saturday, emergency services had lifted him with cranes onto the federal highway 2 next to the track bed. Another car was heaved onto the street on Sunday.
With the help of a special crane weighing 250 tons, the locomotive was to be put back on the track, among other things. These and the remaining wagons should then be transported away by rail if possible. The work is likely to take some time, police said. The railway also said it was not yet possible to estimate when the route would be cleared. “It is therefore not yet possible to predict when the route can be released again,” the company wrote in a statement on Sunday.
The time-consuming clean-up work could be made more difficult by the weather: severe thunderstorms were forecast for the region in the late afternoon and evening on Sunday. The operations management on site will then of course interrupt the work, said a police spokesman.
Cause still unclear
It was still unclear on Sunday why the regional train jumped off the tracks on Friday afternoon shortly after leaving for Munich. There was no collision with another vehicle. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), who visited the scene of the accident with Deutsche Bahn boss Richard Lutz on Saturday, promised that the accident would be dealt with extensively. Bavaria’s Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) said that according to local experts, a technical defect was “the most likely cause”.
The work will continue to affect road traffic. Traffic in Sindelsdorf (district of Weilheim-Schongau) is diverted from the Autobahn 95 in the direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Traffic from the Augsburg region is diverted from the federal highway 17 to Füssen in the direction of the Fernpass. Traffic from Mittenwald/Innsbruck is routed towards Bundesstraße 11 near Krün. Access to the Passion Play in nearby Oberammergau is still possible, it said.
Source: Nachrichten
