Collision “brutal”
“What we know at this stage is that there was a brutal collision between two trams, on the platform, under the station,” declared environmentalist mayor Jeanne Barseghian, who was quickly on site. “There is no death, no person in absolute emergency, according to the information available to me at this stage,” she added, expressing “all our support” for the injured and the emergency services.
“It was a frontal impact following a tram reversing, the causes of which I do not know. You will have to be very careful and wait for the results of the investigation. At the moment, we do not know what caused this backward movement of the tram,” she said. “We have around fifty relative emergencies with non-vital injuries, scalp wounds, one or two collarbone fractures, a sprained knee, things like that. Especially traumatology,” explained Controller General René Cellier, director of the Bas-Rhin fire and rescue service.
“In full reverse”
“There are also around a hundred people involved, who have no particular injuries, but are seen by doctors (…) We do not have an absolute emergency, it could have been much more serious,” he said. he again underlined.
“I was in the stopped tram, there was a tram which came in reverse at full speed, there was a problem with the brakes and it rolled down the slope in reverse,” said a witness, evoking “a big big shock, a big boom”.
The two drivers of the trains “were not physically injured, but are very shocked”, according to the Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois (CTS).
Strasbourg, the first major French city to have put a tram network back into service in 1994, had already experienced an accident, in exactly the same place, at the end of October 1998. A tram had already collided with another in the tunnel under the station, an accident due to excessive speed of one of the two trains which left 17 injured.
