A true horror scenario on the rails was to be trained: a burning ICE train stops in the 1320-meter-long Sandberg Tunnel between Nuremberg and Erfurt. The fire spreads. 100 passengers, some seriously injured, are stuck. „The final boss in the tunnel is time“, said Marc Stielow, fire director in the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior, on site. And for a long time – nothing happened.
Rescuers only arrive after two hours
The first blue lights did not appear until two hours and seven minutes after the train driver called 911. The plan was for rescue workers to arrive at the tunnel within 10 to 25 minutes. But how could this happen?
Why the fire departments didn't come for a long time
According to initial findings, the alarms were passed on far too late. The train driver made the emergency call at 10:15 a.m. as scheduled to the Railway control center The portal „Insüdthüringen.de“ reports that the railway Rescue control center Central Thuringia, however, was not informed of the „emergency“ until 30 minutes later. And then it is said to have taken another 30 minutes for the fire departments in the area to be alerted. There were delays after that too. A fire department expert drew a devastating conclusion at „Insüdthüringen.de“. „If this were real, everyone would have been dead long ago.“
Interior Minister Maier (SPD) watched
The exercise was anything but a small firefighter rehearsal. More than two years were planned. The debacle took place in front of Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier (59, SPD).
Daniel Baumbach, spokesman for the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior, on BILD: „Yes, there was a significantly delayed arrival of several tunnel base units. Something went wrong during the alert.“ What exactly will be evaluated by experts in the coming weeks, Baumbach continues. „An exercise is designed to uncover sources of error so that it works in an emergency.“
Even more mishaps during large-scale exercises
And also in informing the population there was Breakdowns. Warning messages should actually be displayed via the Nina and Katwarn apps. However, according to those responsible, the information did not reach all users.
TLDR during train fire in tunell drill it took German emergency services more than TWO hours to reach affected train and even then they could not get inside the train, departments also used FAX to communicate between each other during this emergency (info from other articles)