Gas train derails in Italy, kills 14, burns 50

VIAREGGIO, Italy — Elia Quiroz was about to go to bed in his home near the railroad station in this Tuscan seaside town when the train rumbled by. His kitchen table started shaking.

“Then I heard an explosion and I went outside,” the 32-year-old Italian recalled. “I saw flames as high as 30, 40 meters, and I ran.”

A gas-filled train derailed while traveling through a downtown neighborhood around midnight Monday, catching residents in their sleep, and setting off a massive explosion that killed at least 14 people and injured dozens of others, most with severe burns.

Death toll figures seesawed on Tuesday, but the Civil Protection eventually put the official count at 14 dead and three missing after the body of a woman was found in her crumbled home. Some 35 of the 50 injured had suffered severe burns.

As rescuers searched through the rubble for survivors, unions and consumer groups denounced what they said is the poor safety record and aging infrastructure of Italy’s rail system and questioned sending highly explosive cargo through an inhabited area.

The 14-car train was traveling from the northern city of La Spezia to Pisa when part of the convoy derailed as it passed Viareggio’s station.

A car filled with liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, sprung a leak and all it took then was a spark to cause an explosion that collapsed five buildings and set fire to a vast area. Homes crumbled or burned, killing residents as they slept.

“We saw a ball of fire rising up to the sky,” said witness Gianfranco Bini, who lives in a building overlooking the station. “We heard three big rumbles, like bombs. It looked like war had broken out.”

His son, Gianni Bini, said he saw a truck driver running away on fire.

“This truck was passing by … when it was hit by the heat wave and I saw the driver ablaze, getting off and walking away” in a daze, he said.

Videos uploaded onto YouTube showed a huge plume of fire and smoke towering above Viareggio’s low houses. An inferno raged through the night, consuming buildings and cars, while the sound of sirens and explosions pierced the air. TV images showed residents, their bodies blackened by the smoke, being carried away on stretchers.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his “participation in the pain striking the whole town” and said in a telegram of condolences he was praying for the victims.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s center-right premier, traveled to Viareggio to take charge of the situation and was greeted with boos and cries of “go home” as he arrived at the town’s municipality. Tuscany is usually a left-leaning region of Italy.

About 100 people had lost their homes and a total of 1,000 were evacuated as a precaution, said Viareggio Mayor Luca Lunardini.

As some 300 firefighters extinguished the blaze, teams specialized in dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats were brought in to prevent the other gas tanks from exploding.

Some of the victims, including a child, were killed at home, said Raffaele Gargiulo, a police spokesman for the nearby city of Lucca, which is in charge of Viareggio. Two drivers on the road alongside the tracks were also killed.

Others suffered severe burns and died at the hospital.

“The condition of the bodies is such that it will be very difficult to identify them,” Gargiulo said.

It was Italy’s deadliest train accident since January 2005, when 17 people were killed in a head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train. The collision occurred in thick fog on a single track line near Bologna in northern Italy, and led to calls for improved train safety.

Berlusconi said at a news conference that Monday’s tragedy was caused by the breakage of a wheel axis of one the gas cars.

The train’s two engineers were lightly injured. While being questioned in the hospital, they said they felt an impact some 650 feet (200 meters) outside the station, shortly before part of the train flew off the tracks, Gargiulo said.

The ADUC consumer group said the train should never have traveled on that line, and blamed Italy’s old railroad lines and their limited number for the disaster.

“How is it possible that such a dangerous cargo could travel through such an important station and an inhabited area?” the groups said in a statement.

The union of Italy’s rail engineers called for greater checks on train cars that are registered abroad, like the ones involved in the crash.

Italy’s state-run railways company said in a statement the first car appeared to derail and explode, pulling another four cars with it. The cars came from Poland and Germany and were driven by a locomotive of the Italian railways Trenitalia.

GATX Rail Europe, which is based in Vienna, said it owns the rail cars. CFO Werner Mitteregger added he did not have any details on what caused the accident.

He said a company representative has been sent to Viareggio to gather information. He had no immediate comment on the state or age of the rail cars, saying they were still trying to identify them.

EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani called on EU countries to step up safety checks of Europe’s rail transport sector, which is increasingly run by private operators.

Italy’s Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni said it was too early to draw conclusions on the crash.

“Once the causes will be clear we will act at an Italian or European level to ensure such accidents don’t happen again,” he said.

Associated Press Writers Ariel David and Alessandra Rizzo in Rome, Veronika Oleksin in Vienna and Constant Brand in Brussels contributed to this report.