BRAKES CAUSED CRASH

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 903, 26 October 1933, Page 1

BRAKES CAUSED CRASH

Dangerous Rescue Work in Train Disaster. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. PARTS, October 24. A message from Evreux states that at least thirty’ persons lost their lives, thirty-four were seriously injured and sixty' slightly' injured when the Cher-bourg-Paris express, travelling at a speed of sixtv-five miles an hour, was derailed near Couches, about seventy miles from Paris. At first it was thought that the derailment was due to foul play, but the police discount this theory and ascribe the accident to the application of the brakes too suddenly' at a high speed. The express was crossing a viaduct over a small river when it left the rails. The engine, tender, guard’s van and three coaches crashed over the parapet and fell thirty feet into the riverbed, where they were shattered to matchwood. Two other coaches were also involved. The dead and dying were thrown in confused heaps, and their extrication was almost impossible owing to the necessity’ of preventing telescoped coaches from plunging into the riverbed. Aeroplanes, a detachment of a Chasseur Regiment, and divers from Rouen assisted in the rescue. Some of the rescue party were lowered with ropes round their waists and risked drowning. They hauled Senator Dudouit and others from the river at the point of death. Many of the rescuers tore sleepers from the track, battered in the sides of coaches and made rough stretchers of palings. A young soldier extricating a body from the wreckage found it was his sister. Both up and down lines were block-

ed by the wreckage for hours, and the broken telegraph lines impeded communication. A soldier described the nightmare of horror he experienced when violent braking awoke him from a doze, and the carriage in which he was travelling skidded sideways on the twisted rails and stopped short of a gaping hole in the parapet, through which the forepart of the train had plunged. He and a sailor companion devoted themselves to caring for an old woman in the same compartment.