Railway accidents

Citation

(2008), "Railway accidents", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 17 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2008.07317ead.004

Railway accidents

Article Type: Disaster database From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 17, Issue 5

21 August 2006 Cairo area, Egypt

Two trains collided in the Nile Delta north of the Egyptian capital Cairo today and there were many casualties, police and health ministry sources said. The accident took place about 0700, local time, near the town of Qalyoub, about 12 miles north of Cairo, they said. One of the trains derailed and overturned, one of the health ministry sources said. Ambulances and rescue workers are on the way to the site, the sources added.

21 August 2006

A train crash killed scores of people and injured more than twice as many today in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo. Early casualty figures varied widely. A security source said 80 people had died and 163 were injured, while the state news agency MENA said 51 people were killed, and the pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite television news reported 65 dead. There was no formal word on the cause of the crash, but an official at the scene said an investigation was under way. MENA said the accident happened early in the morning when a train driver apparently ignored a signal and one commuter train ploughed into the rear of another. “The first train was stopped. We looked and saw the other train coming from behind, screeching,” said Khalil Sheikh Khalil, who had disembarked from a minibus nearby just before the crash happened. “We kept saying: ‘Driver, driver, a train is coming.’ So the train driver moved up 15 metres, and while he was moving, the two trains impacted,” he said. Khalil said the engine of the faster-moving train burst into flames on impact. A witness at the scene said one of the trains had derailed and was lying on its side. It had split into four parts and appeared to have burnt. Rescue workers scrambled to evacuate the casualties, loading them onto some two dozen ambulances. By midday, rescuers were still recovering bodies, using a bulldozer to pull apart a metal side panel to reach a body lodged in one of the carriages. About 1,000 bystanders and passengers’ relatives anxious for news converged on the wreckage, which lay in a semi-rural area about 20 km north of Cairo, sandwiched between fields and apartment buildings.

7 September 2006

The committee formed by the Egyptian Ministry of Transport to investigate the August 21 train crash at Qalyub, in which 58 people were killed, has concluded that the accident was caused by a railway signal malfunction and delays. The crash happened at Qalyub, 20 km north of Cairo, when a stationary train packed with passengers was rammed by a second train. The driver of the stationary train, which had come from Benha, had been obliged to stop in mid-track owing to a delay. The chairman of Egyptian National Railways was sacked over the crash in which over 150 passengers were injured The committee explained that a malfunction caused the signal to show a red light which confused the train driver and activated the device that makes trains stop automatically. Professor Bolus Naguib Salama, head of the committee and railway design professor at Cairo university, said in a statement today that due to the short distance between the two trains, and despite the fact that the second train started to stop automatically, there was not enough time to prevent it colliding with the first train. The head of the committee also said that copies of this report would be sent to the state prosecutor, the cabinet and the two transport committees at both the parliament and the Shoura Council. The investigation committee was composed of professors and experts from outside Egyptian National Railways.