Great fire of Herborn

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The great fire of Herborn was to 21 clock by the accident of July 7, 1987 tanker trucks - tractor-trailer triggered. Six people were killed and 38 injured in the Hessian city ​​of Herborn . Twelve houses burned down and 44 people lost their homes.

Remnants of the tractor unit of the tank truck that crashed in Herborn from the front

the accident

On the evening of July 7, 1987, a five-axis truck from sailed Koblenz , the Federal Highway 255 towards the east . The semi-trailer was loaded with 28,000 liters of gasoline and 6,000 liters of diesel fuel . About ten kilometers before Herborn begins an eight percent gradient that the driver of the articulated lorry was familiar with. He therefore planned to bypass Herborn on the BAB 45 . However, because the truck's brakes failed, it was unable to turn into the motorway entrance at reduced speed .

He rolled the truck further downhill into town. In the city center, at the intersection of Westerwaldstrasse / Hauptstrasse, the tractor-trailer overturned in a curve due to excessive speed at 8:43 p.m. in front of an ice cream parlor. This was well attended on the warm summer evening. The pizzeria on the upper floor was closed. While passers-by freed the driver of the truck from the driver's cab, several thousand liters of gasoline leaked.

After the driver of the truck was freed from the driver's cab, he warned passers-by of an explosion and asked people to leave the scene of the accident. However, some did not take the driver's warnings seriously and stayed. The truck exploded several minutes after the accident. The cause is unknown. As a result, explosions shook the entire old town. Fuel vapors exploded in the sewer system, several house facades collapsed and manhole covers flew up 700 m away. Cars were knocked over and the nearby River Dill was partly on fire. Twelve houses burned out completely.

Rescue and recovery measures

At 8:59 p.m., a disaster alert was triggered. Ernst Achilles , director of the fire department in Frankfurt am Main , happened to be nearby at the time of the accident and, informed by the radio reports, came to the scene of the accident immediately. The voluntary fire brigade of the city of Herborn had their practice and camaraderie evening on that Tuesday. Therefore, the firefighters arrived at the scene about four minutes after the accident. To support the local and surrounding fire and disaster control forces - u. a. the THW local associations of Dillenburg and Solms were on site - Achilles also alerted the professional fire brigade of the city of Frankfurt 100 km away, which provided support with special equipment under his direction. A total of over 500 fire fighters were deployed. At around 1.30 a.m., the acute sources of the fire were extinguished enough for the rescue work to begin.

Five people died as a result of the flame or under the rubble. A woman died of a heart attack in the excitement . Seven burn victims were immediately saved and transported to clinics. There were a total of 38 injured.

The utilities shut off the gas supply and some of the power supply as well as parts of the telephone network in order to reduce the risk of explosion. The residents of the city were made aware of the danger of explosion in radio notices and television broadcasts from public broadcasters and asked to keep windows and doors closed. The deployment of the rescue and recovery forces lasted until the morning of July 9th. Up to 800 journalists came to report.

On the second day, the burned-out tanker truck was lifted onto a semi-trailer with two truck- mounted cranes and brought to the premises of the Daimler-Benz branch in Dillenburg . There, employees were able to dismantle the truck in an uncontrolled manner because it was not determined because of the EPS (see below). The defective brakes on the trailer were removed and examined by Daimler-Benz employees.

Criminal law processing

Remnants of the tractor chassis of the tank truck that crashed in Herborn

In the criminal proceedings that followed the accident, the Limburg Regional Court pronounced the verdict on January 17, 1990 after an eleven-month trial: the haulier was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and the driver to one and a half years suspended. Overheated, worn brakes and the deliberate use of the no longer roadworthy vehicle were found to be the cause of the accident. The freight forwarder even disregarded the concerns of his workshop manager and ordered the trip, according to the court. The driver also took a break shortly before the accident, helplessly examined the smoking brakes and decided to continue driving. The judgment was confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice .

The lack of an emergency lane in connection with the downhill section and the lack of a ban on hazardous substances for passing through the town did not lead to any charges by representatives of the road construction authorities for incorrect risk assessments. In the absence of building and approval regulations for manual transmissions, no Mercedes engineers could be held responsible.

causes

The first braking and shifting problems occurred while driving, whereupon the driver stopped, inspected the vehicle and then decided to continue driving. In the investigation, he continued to state that he had stayed on the downhill stretch because he was hoping for a climb again after the downhill section. A lack of knowledge of the route, a missing brake adjuster, the topographical conditions, at that time still missing emergency lanes, bans on hazardous substances and weight restrictions for passing through town led to a chain of circumstances and to the accident.

Because the driver stated that he could no longer downshift on the downhill stretch and use the engine braking effect , the then new and still faulty electro - pneumatic circuit with which the Mercedes-Benz 1635 S tractor was equipped was initially identified as part of the investigation possible cause investigated. The transmission control was programmed in such a way that the electronics prevented engaging a gear, which would have caused the engine to run too high. The transmission was then in neutral and did not take any other gear, so the braking effect of the engine was also lost. In the event of an electronic failure, the operation can only by the stoppage of the truck, if necessary, by turning off the ignition of the circuit be restored because the electronics "like a PC newly booted must be." So there was no possibility of using the engine brake in the event of a brake failure while driving, and thus a safety system. This statement was initially supported by the expert Breuer, professor of vehicle technology at the Technical University of Darmstadt , who was involved in the accident investigation and stated that "the driver with a manual gearbox [would] have been able to 'compensate' for the failure of the wheel brakes by using the would have at least maintained the minimum speed reached during emergency braking ”.

Therefore, the semitrailer could be braked with the compressed air brake system at the beginning, but due to the high total weight, the meanwhile too high speed and the considerable gradient it came to overheating ( brake fading ). The conventional truck gearshifts with unsynchronized transmissions also do not allow a shift to a low gear when the engine is over-revving, as the countershaft of the transmission cannot be accelerated beyond the engine speed limit, although a slightly higher gear is still possible . After initial investigations against Daimler-Benz as the vehicle manufacturer, no sufficient evidence of a malfunction of the EPS could be produced. Even if malfunctions in these gearshifts occurred quite often in the beginning and drivers were often overwhelmed with the new operating method, the various shifting aids from Daimler-Benz ( Sprintshift , Telligent , MPS) are still programmed today to deal with shifting requests that damage the drive, such as skipping several Do not allow gears or shifting into the overspeed range.

Although the manufacturer was aware of the high susceptibility of the EPS system to errors due to the high number of complaints before the accident, no charges were brought against him. The court did not pursue the statement by Daimler-Benz director Ernst Göhring that there was insufficient electromagnetic compatibility in the electropneumatic circuit. A company is not liable to criminal offenses; For criminal prosecution, individual employees of Daimler-Benz would have had to be shown grossly negligent or intentional behavior, for example having violated design regulations in which parameters such as the downhill slope and failure of the service brakes were not sufficiently taken into account when programming the gearshift. Since there are no design regulations for vehicle transmissions (in contrast to parts such as lighting), there is no legal basis for possible criminal liability.

consequences

Remains of the trailer of the truck that crashed in Herborn in the DASA Museum Dortmund

The accident sparked a debate in Germany about the transport of dangerous goods . The then Federal Transport Minister Jürgen Warnke announced stricter safety regulations and controls.

Road construction

Soon afterwards, an emergency lane was set up in Herborn on Westerwaldstrasse, city center and main access road from the A 45 , which the crashed tanker trailer had also taken, at the level of the sports field and a ban on trucks over 7.5 tonnes was imposed, which, however, not all trucks -Drivers stopped. After another truck accident in 1993, the emergency lane was preceded by a tight left curve that can only be driven through at low speed (speed limit 30 km / h); faster vehicles inevitably get into a gravel bed .

After the conversion of the Herborn-West junction on the A 45, the B 255 was swiveled around in such a way that the motor vehicle traffic coming from the west towards the city area was initially led along with the directional lane to the A 45 in a right curve onto the motorway entrance and then as a left-turn lane is pivoted back onto Westerwaldstrasse. Vehicles with excessive speed are diverted to the hard shoulder of the motorway, where they can roll out safely. The above-mentioned emergency track follows this pivoting.

Truck development

Many truck and tank trailer manufacturers worked to make their vehicles safer. In addition to ABS and ASR , non-contact and wear-free braking systems such as retarders and intarders have been developed.

Under the name TOPAS (abbreviation for "tank vehicle with optimized passive and active safety devices") a tank trailer with numerous technical innovations such as a double-walled tank structure and a lower center of gravity had already been presented. The base vehicle was a Mercedes-Benz 1635 S semitrailer tractor with EPS, which was identical to the tractor that had crashed. Many of the technical innovations of the TOPAS, such as a matrix display that shows the rear traffic that the tractor-trailer is swerving in curves, an automatic fire extinguishing system or side cameras that allow the driver a panoramic view, were not implemented in later series vehicles, as the TOPAS trailer, for example 150,000 DM (approx. 75,000 euros) was more expensive than similar tank vehicles without these safety devices. Features such as the low center of gravity of the tank structure, the double-walled tank or reflector strips are standard today. Some safety elements, such as side protection devices , reflective strips and ABS, are now required by law for all trucks.

The wreck is in the DASA - Working World Exhibition in Dortmund.

literature

  • Michael Schomers: Toxic, caustic, explosive . Rowohlt Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-499-12349-5

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Höhle: When 35,000 liters of gasoline set Herborn on fire. In: The world . July 7, 2012, accessed January 25, 2020 .
  2. ↑ H.-G. Hartmann: The Herborn disaster . In: THW-Journal , Issue 3/87, pp. 9-11
  3. ↑ H.-G. Hartmann: Still relevant seven months later . In: THW Journal , issue 1/88, pp. 28/29.
  4. ↑ The fire brigade's operational sequence on July 8, 1987
  5. ↑ Michael Schomers : Toxic, caustic, explosive , page 107.
  6. ↑ Michael Schomers: Toxig, caustic, explosive , page 109 and television report Monitor (WDR) at the end of July 1987.
  7. ^ Search for the scapegoat In: Die Zeit , January 12, 1990.
  8. ↑ The lessons were learned from Herborn. In: welt.de . July 2, 1997, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Gerhard Mauz: "At the request of Daimler-Benz" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1989 ( online ).
  10. ^ Toxic, caustic, explosive by Michael Schomers, page 105 (statement by Wolfgang Baars / ÖTV) + page 107
  11. ↑ DISASTERS: Delicate lever . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1987 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Michael Schomers: Toxig, caustic, explosive , p. 109/110 and the television program Monitor in July 1987
  13. ↑ Technical approval of electronic auxiliary systems in motor vehicles . PDF. German Bundestag - Small question from the Greens parliamentary group. Printed matter 11/5265 of November 28, 1989. Online at dip21.bundestag.de.

Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ 49 ″  N , 8 ° 18 ′ 15.6 ″  E