Keystone-SDA
Two trams collided in the tunnel leading to the stop serving Strasbourg station on Saturday afternoon. This extremely rare accident left several dozen injured.
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January 11, 2025 – 6:45 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) “The toll, which is not definitive, is around 30 to 35 victims, only relative emergencies,” indicated the Bas-Rhin prefecture. The public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation. Shortly after, firefighters injured around fifty people.
A large security perimeter was established in front of the station, where numerous ambulances took up position, according to AFP journalists on site. Injured people were evacuated on stretchers and others were taken care of under the station’s glass roof.
A video posted on social media shows a chaotic scene just after the accident with two trams seriously damaged in the tunnel. One of the vehicles appears to have derailed due to the impact.
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 General Controller 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 tram at a stop, there was a tram that 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.
