Bad Münder railway accident

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bad Münder railway accident on September 9, 2002 in the Bad Münder train station ( Hameln-Pyrmont district ) was the head-on collision of the freight trains IRC 51219 and KC 62848, releasing 41,600 liters of the carcinogenic and flammable chemical epichlorohydrin .

Starting position

Infrastructure

Bad Münder station is on the double-track , electrified Hanover – Altenbeken railway line . The train journeys are secured here by a station block and punctual train control . At noon on the day of the accident, a fault was found on a switch in the station area. She was then set in one position. This meant that trains from Hameln to Hanover had to use platform 2 instead of platform 3 instead of the usual route, the continuous main line in the opposite direction. The signaling in the station enabled journeys in both directions over both main tracks, so that operation was possible without safety restrictions.

IRC 51219

From Hanover , the IRC 51219 came, pulled by the locomotive 140 635 , with 18 freight cars , one of which was tank car loaded with epichlorohydrin. The train was formed in the Seelze marshalling yard and should go to Mannheim .

According to the records, a brake test was first carried out on the assembled freight wagons in the Seelze marshalling yard with a stationary brake testing device. After that everything was fine. After the locomotive sat down in front of the train about two hours later, only a simplified brake test was carried out - with a positive result: It was only checked whether the braking system between the locomotive and the rest of the train was working.

But already in Empelde , only a few kilometers away from Seelze, the engine driver discovered that the brakes were not working properly: For this reason , he or she ran over a signal showing “stop” by more than 200 meters without any consequences which drew from it - z. B. carried out a brake test. A full brake test would have been necessary at this point as the braking performance of the train was clearly insufficient for the driver. As was later determined, the brake line between the fourth and fifth car was probably interrupted. If the driver had carried out the full brake test required in this case in accordance with regulations, the interruption of the main air line would have been noticed and the subsequent accident avoided.

KC 62848

From the direction of Hameln, the KC 62848 was about 40 minutes late, hauled by the locomotive 152 075 , which pulled 41 bulk goods wagons loaded with potash salt . He came from Heringen and went to Hamburg . Due to its delay, this train should first pass through the bottleneck, platform 2 of the Bad Münder station, so IRC 51219 should stop at the entrance signal in front of the station. KC 62848 left the neighboring Hameln train station at 8:33 p.m. The local dispatcher approved the entry and exit in Bad Münder station and determined the route through platform 2. IRC 51219 had left Springe train station on the other side of Bad Münder at 20:37 .

the accident

IRC 51219 drove at just under 100 km / h towards the distant signal of the entry signal of the Bad Münder train station, which indicated "Wait to stop" . The engineer tried about 300 meters before this signal a rapid braking to initiate, on the brakes but did not respond adequately. So he drove past the main signal showing "Halt" at 8:43 p.m. , drove the turnout set for the KC 62848 coming from its core to track 2, the track in the opposite direction, and drove into it at more than 50 km / h. When the engine driver of the KC 62848 saw the IRC 51219 coming towards him, he also initiated an emergency brake and reduced the speed of his train to almost 30 km / h.

At 8:44 p.m., the two trains collided at km 42.150. The locomotive and the first four wagons derailed from the KC 62848, and the locomotive and the first eight wagons from the IRC 51219 also derailed, some of which pushed one another and piled up. The tank wagon loaded with the dangerous goods epichlorohydrin, classified as car no. 8 in IRC 51219 , leaked so that the epichlorohydrin leaked and ignited. The fire led to the explosion of an empty container transported on another freight car after an hour and to the explosion of the tank car two hours after the collision. As a result, the fire spread to several of the derailed cars.

consequences

Immediate consequences

The two drivers survived with serious injuries. The property damage amounted to around 11 million euros. After the accident, the Hanover – Hameln line between Springe and Hameln was closed in the evening until October 29, 2002 in order to remedy the consequences of the accident. The 140 635 locomotive was retired after the accident, and the 152 075 was rebuilt with a new locomotive body in the Dessau repair shop .

The leaking epichlorohydrin

Initially, due to a reporting error at the accident site, it was unknown for about an hour which hazardous substance was on fire. As a precautionary measure, the police and the German Red Cross evacuated around 200 residents and patients from a rehabilitation clinic. The residents of Bad Münder and the surrounding villages were asked to keep windows and doors closed. The evacuees were able to return to their homes during the night, as the measurement results were consistently below the detection limit. The fire was extinguished at around 2:00 a.m., however, extinguishing foam had to be sprayed repeatedly on the accident site until the afternoon of September 11 to prevent the epichlorohydrin from evaporating.

Although the measurement results were below the detection limit, about 250 people with headaches or irritation of the respiratory tract received medical treatment. The health department of the Hameln-Pyrmont district offered blood tests as a precaution to all emergency services who were directly in the danger zone . Measurements were also carried out on the emergency vehicles. The results were all negative here too. On the other hand, the Lower Saxony State Health Office stated that every tenth of the residents investigated at the accident site in Bad Münder had elevated liver values ​​- but whether this was caused by the accident remained open. In order to track possible secondary illnesses due to the Bad Münder train accident, an observation is made in the Lower Saxony cancer registry . The Bad Münder train accident was a decisive motive for the establishment of the Lower Saxony Center for Health and Infection Protection (ZGI) in Hanover in September 2007, which functions as the central medical advice center for health crisis situations in toxicological as well as epidemiological risk situations.

examination

The investigation by the Federal Railway Authority was ended in July 2004 and showed that the accident was caused, on the one hand, by the fact that the majority of the wagons of IRC 51219 did not brake because the brake line between the fourth and fifth wagons was interrupted, of 18 wagons so 14 did not brake. It was no longer possible to determine how this defect was designed and why it occurred.

On the other hand, the engine driver of this train failed to draw conclusions from it after he had already noticed a malfunction in Empelde. So the main cause of the accident was human error .

literature

  • Imke Basting: Exposure and risk assessment in children from Bad Münder after the railway accident of September 9, 2002 . Dissertation, Munich, 2006.
  • Federal Railway Authority: Investigation Report (business hours: 58411 Uub 2.14) - Collision of freight trains IRC 51219 and 62848 KC at the station Bad Munder on 9 September 2002 at 20:44 . ( online as PDF )
  • NN: The Bad Münder accident . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , issue 11/2002, ISSN  1421-2811 , p. 500.
  • NN: " Volldran vorbeigerauschen " , in: DVZ , No. 136/2005 of November 15, 2005
  • Erich Preuss : Railway accidents at Deutsche Bahn. Causes - Background - Consequences. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-613-71229-6 , pp. 75-77.
  • Katja Radon et al .: Geographical distribution of acute symptoms after a train collision involving epichlorohydrin exposure , in: Environmental Research 102 (2006), pp. 46–51.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Federal Railway Office: Investigation report , p. 41.
  2. ↑ DB AG (Ed.): Guideline 915.01 Operating and testing brakes during operation . Module 915.0103 page 1 .
  3. ↑ Since this area was badly damaged by the fire caused by the accident, only limited knowledge could be gained from its investigation (Federal Railway Office: investigation report , p. 53).
  4. ^ NN: rail accident .
  5. ↑ Was the collision in Bad Münder avoidable? , Faz.net, September 20, 2002 (accessed November 30, 2010).
  6. ↑ Alexander Katalinic: Epidemiological Cancer Registration in Germany - Inventory and Perspectives , in: Bundesgesundheitsblatt 47 (2004), p. 424.
  7. ↑ top v .: New crisis center in Hanover , in: Ärzte Zeitung No. 173/2007 of October 5, 2007, p. 7.
  8. ^ Federal Railway Office: Investigation report , p. 55.

Coordinates: 52 ° 10 ′ 41 ″  N , 9 ° 28 ′ 5 ″  E