A video from a witness on social media shows a chaotic scene just after the accident with two trams seriously damaged in the tunnel at the station. One of the trams appears to have derailed due to the impact.
“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 are a number of people who were present in the trains. There are no deaths, no people in absolute emergency, according to the information I have at this stage, but obviously the injured people “, some are in a state of shock since the shock was relatively violent, and therefore we express all our support to them, as well as to the relief forces who mobilized very quickly,” added Ms. Barseghian.
Collision between two STIB vehicles in the center of Brussels: the articulated bus derails the tram, 7 injured (PHOTOS)
“In full reverse”
“It was a frontal collision following a reversing of a tram, the causes of which I do not know. We will have to be very careful and wait for the results of the investigation, for the moment we do not know what caused this rear movement of the tram”, she added.
“We have around fifty relative emergencies with non-vital injuries, wounds to the scalp, one or two fractures of the clavicle, a sprained knee, things like that. Mainly traumatology,” explained the controller general. René Cellier, director of the Bas-Rhin fire and rescue service.
“There are also around a hundred people involved, who have no particular injuries but are seen by doctors. Around fifty vehicles and around 130 firefighters are on site. We do not have an absolute emergency, it would have could have been much more serious,” he further underlined.
“I was in the tram at the stop, 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 at Les Halles (the next stop , Editor’s note) to the central station we heard a big big shock, a big boom,” Johan, a direct witness to the collision, who did not wish to give his last name, told AFP.
The two drivers of the trains “were not physically injured, but are very shocked”, according to Emmanuel Auneau, the director of the Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois (CTS).
Strasbourg, the first large 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, a accident due to excessive speed of one of the two trains which left 17 injured.
