SCENES OF HORROR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 244, 12 October 1907, Page 13

SCENES OF HORROR.

A FRENCH TRAIN WRECK. LONDON, August 30. Ten people were killed outright, another has since died, and several more are hovering betwixt life and death, as the result of the terriole railway accident which occurred on the Paris-Bordeaux line on Saturday night, August 23. The accident was due to defective signalling at a station called Libourno, whereby an express train left the main line, and running down a branch line, crashed into a goods train which was shunting at Coutxas station. The two eugines and the first two coaches of the express were absolutely wrecked, and all the other coaches were thrown off the metals. Dreadful scenes and hairbreadth escapes are described by the survivors. The rescuers came I upon a powerfully-built man wedged in up to his waist between two halves of a smashed railway carriage. His legs were I both crushed in the wreckage. He showed extraordinary fortitude. "Don't waste time," he called. "I know my legs are gone. Cut them away. Don't try to get them out. Cut them off, and carry mc away." He became angry when not obeyed, and shouted, "Do as I tell you. I know better what is to be done than you, don't I?" But the rescuers managed to get him ont, with his legs both fearfully mangled, vveak cries of "Mother, mother," came constantly from under a portion of the -wreckage. Tbe child, who could not be seen, moaned unceasingly. At last, but not before seven in the morning, a little girl of six was found lying on the dead body of a woman—her mother —while the father had also been killed. All three were under the wreckage of a third-class carriage. The child, when rescued, could only cry "Maman. maman." She did not at first seem much hurt, bnt she had Internal injuries, and died an hour later. Women and men praying in tears stood round her. Another passenger by the -wrecked train, a M. Belliere, at the time eif the collision, was talking with a fellow-traveller. Suddenly the carriage assumed the form of a concertina or accordion, the door was torn of its hinges, and his fellow-traveller disappeared in the darkness. M. Belliere did not see the man after he was himself rescued- Before being extricated through a hole in the top of the carriage, M. Belliere was for some time crushed up against a corner of his compartment, with the point of a fragment of iron on his eyebrows. He was a long time trying to free himself from the debris, but he escaped wtihont any serious Injury. His eyebrows and nose were cut by the iron fragment. M. Dehogues, a Taris dentist, also one of those who escaped from the disaster, gives a curious account of his experiences. The dentist is a man of many misfortunes. He has had a serious fall from a horse already, and in a bicycle accident broke his left leg. On Saturday night his right leg was badly crushed, and he now complains that he has not a sound bone in his body. Another of the survivors, a woman, had her legs pinned under a seat, and was only extricated after the railway men had taken away the footboard of the carriage. Near this woman was a man buried under wreckage which had caught fire, and -was beginning to blaze. The man was piteously crying for a pinch of snull, and said that he was unable to breathe. He was extricated after some trouble. Not far from him was a dead woman with her face cnt in two, making her utterly unrecognisable as a human being except for her torn and blood-stained clothes. This accident, coming as it does after several others which have happened recently on French railway lines, is widely discussed in Paris. Even M. Barthou, Minister of Public Works, before leaving town for Coutras, referred to the fatality as belonging to the "serie noire." the black series, and he recalled the fact that only three weeks back he had to visit the scene of another railway accident in the North of France. ,