At least 30 die when two trains collide

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 4

At least 30 die when two trains collide

NZPA-AP Hinton, Alberta A Canadian passenger train and a 114-car freight train collided in a remote area of Alberta province on Saturday. A railway spokesman said between 30 to 40 people died. An ambulance company reported 80 of the 103 passengers were injured. The accident occurred 16km east of Hinton, a pulp-mill town on the main Canadian National railroad line. The freight train, with three diesel locomotives in addition to its waggons, was westbound and the nine-car passenger train was east bound. Onlookers said 30 cars were strewn about and piled on top of one another in a 100 metre by 50 metre mass of smoulder-

ing, twisted steel along a flat stretch in thick forest country. Smoke curled from the wreckage and piles of sulphur from the freight train were scattered along - the tracks. The accident occurred near Jasper National Park, on the border between the Canadian pro-

vinces of Alberta and British Columbia, 282 km west of Edmonton, the state capital.

“We have received word that there are between 30 and 40 deaths,” said Frederick Jennings, spokesman for the Gov-ernment-owned VIA Rail, the Canadian passenger service, in a radio interview from Montreal. “We cannot be more precise than this at the

moment We are waiting for a precise count from the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police and Canadian National Railway,” he said.

Survivors were being taken to the Hinton hospital, some in shuttle flights by helicopters, and police were setting up a makeshift morgue in the town with a population of 1800. The estimated number of dead would place the crash among the worst in Canadian history. On September 1, 1947, 31 people were killed when two passenger trains collided head-on at Dugald, in Manitoba.

The cause of the collision was not immediately known. In remote areas in most

of Canada, particularly in the west, passengers and freight trains share the same tracks, but freight has the right-of-way. Cross-country VIA Rail passenger trains are often half a day behind schedule because they must frequently move on to sidetracks to let freight trains pass. The Rev. Clement Gauthier, a Catholic priest in Hinton, said in a telephone interview that he and three other priests spent all morning in the hospital comforting survivors. He said “ the survivors told him most people on the passenger train were sleeping or eating breakfast in the dining car when the collision occurred.