BRITAIN: Accident again raises questions about Britain's rail safety, writes Rachel Donnelly from London
Britain's fifth major train accident in six years yesterday claimed the lives of seven people after a high-speed train was derailed and crashed into a station platform in Hertfordshire.
More than 70 people were also injured, including 15 critically, when the final carriage of the four-carriage West Anglia Great Northern service from London's King's Cross station to King's Lynn, in Norfolk, left the tracks as it passed Potters Bar station at about 12.55 p.m. and careered sideways across the platform.
As British transport police carried out a search of the area to ensure no one was unaccounted for, medical teams at Barnet General Hospital in north London and at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, were battling to save the lives of at least three further people. Many of the "walking wounded" were being treated for injuries, including fractures, head and neck wounds and cuts and bruises.
About 10 minutes after West Anglia Great Northern's high-speed 12.45 p.m. service from King's Cross to King's Lynn left the north London train terminus with 151 passengers the train was derailed as it approached Potters Bar station. Travelling at about 100 m.p.h., the final carriage of the four-carriage electric train swung off from the tracks, smashing into a bridge next to the station, turning on its side and sliding across two platforms and careering into waiting rooms at the station. It eventually stopped when it became wedged underneath the platform canopy.
Five of the fatalities were among the 30 passengers in the fourth carriage, some of which were thrown from the train as it slid across the platform.
Police said a sixth person was killed after becoming trapped by debris falling from the bridge next to the station but were unsure whether the person had originally been thrown from the train.
The front three carriages of the train eventually stopped about 500 yards north of the station and amid a horrifying scene of destruction, one set of the train's wheels were left wedged to the track. At rush hour Potters Bar is a busy commuter station with hundreds of workers and children waiting for services to and from London and the number of fatalities was relatively low as at the time of the derailment the station was quiet.
As the police and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) launched an immediate inquiry, with the HSE's Railway Inspectorate expected to release an interim report next week, Queen Elizabeth broke off from her Golden Jubilee tour of the UK to express her "shock and sadness" at the incident.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said his thoughts were with "the relatives and friends of the dead and injured at this time". The Transport Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers, pledged to carry out a "thorough investigation" into the cause of the incident, saying he had asked health and safety investigators to report to him as quickly as possible.
The Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, also offered his condolences to the relatives of those killed and urged the rail accident investigators to report quickly.
"It will be vital that a full investigation is carried out as quickly as possible so that we can understand why this accident occurred and so we can avert any future accident which may be caused for similar reasons," Mr Duncan Smith said.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, said he was "deeply shocked" by the incident and offered his condolences to the families of the dead and injured.
The incident again raises questions about the safety record on Britain's railways, which has seen five serious accidents in the past six years including crashes at Clapham, Hatfield and Ladbroke Grove, where 31 people died when two trains collided outside Paddington station in London in October 1999.
Among the possible causes of the crash, the police and investigators will be looking at whether any debris was left on the track. Early reports ruled out the possibility that the driver, who was unhurt, passed a signal at red.
But with the Potters Bar derailment taking place a few miles down the track from the scene of the Hatfield crash in October 2000, passengers and industry experts will be again raising doubts about the standards on Britain's rail network.
Soon after the crash, one witness, Mr Andy Perversi, who was standing on one of the platforms at Potters Bar, spoke of how he ran when he saw the derailed train carriage heading towards the station.
"I then stopped and turned and saw the train derail. On the line I saw a lady of Chinese origin. I climbed down to help her," he said. "I took her pulse and that was weak. I held her in my arms to try and comfort her and started screaming for help. After a while a paramedic came along but he said there was nothing he could do for her and we should cover her with a blanket." Another witness, Mr Amadin Ryan, gave a terrifying description of the moment the derailed carriage headed towards the platform.
"The first thing I heard was the noise," he told Sky News. "We were just coming through the tunnel on to the platform, then there was just dust and the back carriage careering towards us through the dust. We had to run out of the way, there weren't a lot of people on the platform, and after that everything was just a haze for a moment. Then we saw bodies flying out of the train as that carriage slid towards us. One guy was rolled up like a ball and came flying through the window, it was absolutely awful."