A German train carrying 510 passengers catches fire

[Carla_Sinclair]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/12/a-german-train-carrying-510-pa.html

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[Bill_Sudbrink]

I’ll bet it was a locked brake.

[DukeTrout]

Scary! I’m glad no one was hurt.

[wolfman_al2]

Deutsche Bahn is pretty much a shit show. They raise ticket prises and cut corners everywhere to please the shareholders. It should hev never been privatized (the same goes for Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post, they were bloated buerocratic monsters when they were state owned, but at least they did work properly).

[FGD135]

Converted into a PLC, but never sold. No IPO, not traded.
Still 100% owned by Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Never recovered from the Mehdorn years, though.
And don’t even get me started on Ronald Pofalla.

[FGD135]

Good call by the cop on the train.
Also, firefighters learned a lot from the 2001incident at Offenbach where a first generation ICE power car caught fire and burned.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090107093605/http://www.feuerwehr-offenbach.de/fwo.php?p=0|&c=doku.ice.ice_1

[GagHalfrunt]

There is a discussion of possible causes at ICE caught fire on German High Speed Line | RailUK Forums

A forum member who works for Deutsche Bahn says:

No doubt it helps to have people on board which are trained to handle such situations.

But I wouldn’t over-emphasize the role of the police man (there is no railway police existing in Germany anymore!). If he had not been there, someone else would have pulled the alarm.

The on-board staff is also trained regularly to deal with incidents which require to evacuate passengers. This includes, of course, uncontrollable fires.

[OTee]

You lost, it currently seem’s it was a transformer inside the car but analysis still not finished.

[RickMycroft]

@GagHalfrunt

But I wouldn’t over-emphasize the role of the police man (there is no railway police existing in Germany anymore!). If he had not been there, someone else would have pulled the alarm.

Maybe, but humans in a group tend to defer individual action to the group as a whole in hopes that someone else knows what to do. (There was a test done with a subject seated with non-reacting ringers and increasing smell of smoke. Some didn’t react until simulated smoke was pouring out the ventilators.)

Key minutes could have been lost while people discussed it.

[the_borderer]

@RickMycroft

Maybe, but humans in a group tend to defer individual action to the group as a whole in hopes that someone else knows what to do. (There was a test done with a subject seated with non-reacting ringers and increasing smell of smoke. Some didn’t react until simulated smoke was pouring out the ventilators.)

Key minutes could have been lost while people discussed it.

A lot of people don’t understand how fast a fire can spread. The Bradford City Valley Parade stadium fire took less than ten minutes from there being a little bit of smoke to the whole stand being on fire.