Kaprun funicular fire - all defendants cleared of negligence

A snowHead

All defendants have been cleared, following the long-running trial of 16 people charged with causing the Kaprun funicular fire, in which 155 skiers and boarders died in a tunnel up to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier. The disaster happened in November 2000, and the trial began in June 2002.

According to a report in today's Japan Times, a judge will give his verdict on Thursday, which is interesting in itself. If correct (and I've not seen a UK report that says one way or another), an Austrian verdict of this significance is therefore not determined by a jury.

The verdict will be scrutinised in great detail internationally because of the variety of nationals who perished - Americans, Germans, Dutch, Slovenians, Japanese among others - including British ski instructor Kevin Challis who died because he gave up his place on an earlier train to an elderly passenger and left his daughter to ride to the top in safety. Kevin Challis then boarded the fateful train.

There was much speculation as to the cause of the combustion. A cigarette end, a ski waxing burner and other possible factors were all considered but ultimately the blame was placed on a heater installed in the driver's cab. It's alleged that the heater was negligently installed and set light to a fluid used to operate the train.

But many other factors were crucial to the trial - the lack of fire extinguishers, the locked doors that trapped many passengers, the lack of any organised means of escape. Several passengers survived by escaping down the tunnel, rather than up. The section of tunnel above the train simply became a chimney of poisonous fumes, and that's where many of the victims died.

A snowHead

ghastly

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, I hope they concentrate on learning to take preventative action, rather than seeking to 'avenge' the fatalities through punishment of those who, in all probablility have probably suffered enough.

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This report from the BBC has some background on the story, including the point that the trial was expected to have concluded a year ago.

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In the seconds between posting that link and it appearing, the BBC updated the report to say that all 16 defendants have been cleared of negligence.

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I'd be astounded if the death of 155 people in a manner such as this was not the fault of somebody, whether it be design, operation or whatever.
I wonder whether the decision has anything to do with a damage limitation exercise for the tourist industry.

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As a first step it would be good if the full judgement of Judge Manfred Seiss, who gave the verdict, is translated and posted on the web. It always seemed extraordinary to me that the train was designed to lock passengers in with no means of escape. Surely any emergency stop of any train should enable people to get out if necessary? As for the electric heater which set light to the hyraulic fluid, a fire extinguisher could have dealt with it in seconds before the fire spread. As I recall, there were none on board.

The judge apparently declared everyone innocent because they had complied with pre-existing safety codes. Don't all trains in Austria have to have means of escape and fire extinguishers?

After all it is free

I'm not sure but I did notice on tuesday morning that the swiss train I was travelling on had a request not to pull the emergency stop whilst the train was in a tunnel due to the possible risk of fire or words to that effect and whilst I think on the subject the only trains I can recall seeing fire extinguishers on are in the uk.

The biggest fault I can see with the train design is that it failed secure rather than failed safe, if the doors had been designed to open in an emergency rather than lock up and if signs had been posted to direct people down the tunnel then I would suggest that most if not all the people would have survived even if the train itself was destroyed, an example possibly of a failure on the behalf of the saftey authorities to examine all the risks and regulate accordingly Sad

It's a tragic set of circumstances, that it's easy to judge in hindsight. If,in another situation people had got off the train, and then it had started moving.....people would be saying "why weren't passengers kept on the train?"

I just hope that lessons are learned and that we never see a repeat of it.

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It does seem to me that a tragic course of events lead ultimately to this disaster. As Elizabeth quite rightly says, hindsight often presents a course for judgement in situations like this. One can only hope that the lessons have been learned.

As for the defendants, will this tragedy not live with them, and to a degree their families, until they die? I can't imagine that a day would go by without that event being very much with them.

Much of the safety we take for granted in many areas of our lives has come about because of accidents and the lessons learned from them. Not much consolation to the bereaved families, I appreciate.

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Here's an English-language report from Germany (where a high percentage of the victims had lived), by Deutsche Welle.

If the Austrian courts are now shot of the matter, then it seems civil proceedings (which would normally require a lower level of proof of negligence) will go ahead in other countries. The matter will now probably drag on for years.

As a Londoner I'd simply observe that, even back in the 60s, fire extinguishers were a familiar sight on tube trains. It seems a disgrace that they were never available on that funicular.

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How effective would a fire extinguisher be? Fortunately, I've never been in a situtation where I've had to use one, but I always wonder if the small one on my bus would actually put anything out.

You know it makes sense.

Everybody has a PHD in hindsight but lets not forget this was an accident, nodoby stood anything to gain (Austria lost many lives too). People have died on trains in other places too.
Yes I'm sure the American lawyers / American business world will be all over this while their country causes the loss of many more lives elsewhere in the world.
Justice?

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Shermanator, I wasn't suggesting that this is always the case. But I suspect it is in this instant. As for the example you mention, how on earth could that be a ligitimate arguement. Sounds like the guy is in denial.

David, your observation about fire extinguishers is fair, but they didn't prevent the awful underground fire at Kingscross in 1987 in which 31 people died, where a previously unknown effect of fire called the "Trench Effect" became tragically known - here's the quote

"This trench effect was seen to cause hot gases in the buoyant plume to lie along the escalator surface and create a rapid airflow which caused these gases to curl over and over towards the next steps above. The airflow in the Trench increased in proportion to the size of the fire, eventually creating a flamethrower type effect up and into the ticketing Hall”

Is this in essence what happened in Kaprun?

A snowHead

I for one am glad that the American blame culture doesn't seem to have fully spread to Europe yet.

If everybody involved in the horrible event did their job to the standard required at the time, why should any guilt attach to them now.

Yes lets learn the lessons and change future requirements to prevent anything like this happening again, but why must we have someone to point the finger at?

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I am afraid that any portable fire extinguisher would only have been any use if it was located near the seat of the fire, if it was used quickly by someone who knew how to use it, if it was suitable (in terms of size and extinguishing agent) for the materials involved and if it could be used before the fire could spread into adjacent materials. From experience of travelling in these vehicles I would say it is unlikely that any of the passengers would be have been able to deploy an extinguisher effectively even if the fire had started in the passenger area, impossible if it was in the driver's cab. If it started in the driver's cab then the driver may have been able to do something with an extinguisher but only if the initial fire was fairly small and confined to the area of origin and he/she was able to act quickly. In my view the only option with any realistic chance of extinguishing a spreading fire under those circumstances without harming the passengers would have been a large halon flooding system. These are of course banned under the Montreal protocol etc. Even then the updraught may have rendered such a system ineffective. Notwithstanding the fact that the source of ignition may have been an unauthorised heater, a question remains as to why the construction of the vehicle allowed the fire to spread?

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With respect to anyone who believes that justice has been done, the relatives of the dead don't seem to agree. Here are the views of some of them, including the Austrian widow of British ski instructor, Christl Challis, reported by today's The Scotsman.

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I've just done a search for legal documents relating to Kaprun and have come across one in German which has just been published. It seems like the political fallout of Kaprun is as great as with Hutton in the UK. A number of questions are being asked about faulty process, missing and destroyed evidence and the lack of openeness in the investigation and trial. There are also over 100 civil suits pending.

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I'm sure they don't, as they said,

"Margit Sieger, a German whose only son, Patrick, 24, died in the fire, said: "I’m speechless about this verdict but I was prepared that this could happen. I’m very sad and I wanted them to pay for the death of my only child. I'm on my own and I have to cope with everything.""

They will, I'm sure, have real problems in trying to grasp that their relatives have gone. To have a taget, an individual, to blame could help. They want someone "..to pay.." for their pain.

But as the Judge was quoted,

Mr Seiss said: "You cannot hold a company responsible, only people. But in this case no individual person is responsible for this accident in the criminal sense of the law."

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Yes, that's what the Judge is saying. It's also very difficult and rare to convict for 'corporate manslaughter' in the UK, but presumably many of these relatives sat through the trial and are exasperated because specific individuals apparently failed to protect the public in their eyes.

The actions of the transport inspectors in allowing a train to run with a dodgy arrangement of "unapproved" heater near inflammable fluid need closer scrutiny. The word "unapproved" was, I think, the description of the prosecutors.

Those inspectors also allowed the train to run without extinguishers and means of escape from a train with locked doors.

It seems a dodgy verdict to me, and it's a shame that this trial was held in a central European country with no jury. Is Austrian justice at fault, as many Austrians seem to be asking?

After all it is free

I think I can understand the heater issue, after all most people would not think a heater (rather than a fire) would be likely to cause serious damage therefore its pressence would be passed without question.

What I find unbelievable is that there was no properly defined emergency escape procedure from the train, that is where imho serious questions should have been asked

"Those inspectors also allowed the train to run without extinguishers and means of escape from a train with locked doors."

I'm not looking to take issue here, but the News last night stated that there were fire extinguishers aboard. That said, Alan's earlier comments suggest that they may well have been inappropriate/insufficient.

Were the doors remaining closed a matter of design, or did they fail to open?

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Are you seriously saying that cost should be an object, when the deaths of 155 people are being pinned on 16 people, and the relatives of the 155 dead are seeking justice?

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You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I think the problem is that we have so few facts. The trial has barely been reported over the past 18 months. My impression, from a couple of reporters' comments, is that the death train operated under 'cable car law' rather than 'train law', and the operating requirements were different.

Can anyone shed any light on that?

A snowHead

sherman-maeir, that isn't justice.

David Goldsmith, I agree entirely, whereas the trail will have covered things in huge detail. so probably the judge is better positioned to, errr, well, judge Exclamation

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Safety standards are different in each country. There are small differences in English and Austrian standards. For example, electrical sockets in English bathrooms are subject to special safety conditions although this doesn't seem to be the case in Austria. Austria cars generally have winter wheels and insurance companies may not pay out in the event of a car accident on ice/snow.

Judging the Kaprun accident from an English, German or American point of view and applying each country's safety standards may produce a different result.
It was judged that the people involved did not break the current Austrian safety standards.

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Shifting the thread slightly, the use of jury trials in this country has been under scrutiny for some time. How can, for example, a dozen good men and true be expected to follow months of evidence in a highly technical corporate fraud case.

The problem is balance. Juries can be lead by emotion or better advocacy skills, but a judge sitting on his own or on a panel could well look at the legal points with more clarity, but may be more case hardened.

There is no such thing as a perfect system.

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Update in JAPAN TODAY
[PG filed this update to the story on 28 September 2004. We split it to snowNews as a headline story] :

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Prosecution appeals 8 acquittals in Austrian cable car fire

VIENNA — The Salzburg prosecution office on Monday appealed eight acquittals in the Kaprun [funicular] fire which killed 155 people, including 10 Japanese, in 2000, the Austrian news agency APA reported.

The case stemmed from the Nov. 11, 2000 fatal blaze when a [funicular] caught fire in a tunnel leading to a glacier skiing resort. (Kyodo News)
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After all it is free

[PG has filed a news update concerning an £83m claim for compensation, which has been split from this thread to the News section. Click here.]

I was under the impression that most of the people died because they went up the tunnel and were overcome by fumes and a fireball which was the result of the tunnel being open at the bottom. As I understand it, all all underground funiculars in the alps have now been closed at both ends to stop this happening again. I hope I'm not wrong. A friend of mine lost 4 friends in that accident, but it was an accident.

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Is the funicular at La Daille closed at the bottom end? It was all very open & looked difficult to enclose last time I saw it 2 years ago.

Help!!

Kaprun funicular fire - all defendants cleared of negligence

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