Passengers on the doomed Austrian funicular train smelled smoke even as it began its trip up to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier which ended in tragedy, a survivor said Monday.
Gerhard Hanetseder described how he saved himself and his 12-year-old daughter after smashing a train window with ski boots, as panic mounted in the carriage when it stopped 600 meters into the steep, narrow tunnel.
"We were lucky because we had got on at the back. The doors closed quite normally, but it was only a few seconds or so before one of the passengers said -- smoke is coming from somewhere," the 39-year-old Austrian said.
"I didn't take it seriously at first," he told state radio, two days after the blaze which killed more than 150 people, nearly half of them foreigners.
He described the mounting panic within the carriage as the passengers became aware that the whiff of smoke was a fire which was spreading.
"We tried to get the doors open, but they wouldn't. Then with ski-shoes and other objects we smashed at the windows," he said.
Hanetseder and his daughter were lucky that they had been in one of the rear carriages, where all the 12 passengers who survived the blaze had been traveling.
When a window had been broken, Hanetseder pushed his 12-year-old daughter out of the carriage before following her.
There was no light to mark the way, he said, and neither of them knew if they were going the right way to safety.
"It was pitch black. We both thought that we were going to burn," he said.
A number of those who did escape the train died of asphyxiation, inhaling the billowing smoke as they desperately scrambled up the inside of the tunnel.
Hanetseder said he had no idea how the fire began. Some reports have spoken of a short-circuit, others of the possibility of gas canisters being carried in the back of the train, or even fireworks carried by passengers.
Rescue workers have now gained access to the site, and 30 bodies have been moved from the wreck into a side tunnel. They will be lifted by helicopters to a mortuary during the day to be examined by pathologists -- KAPRUN, Austria, Nov 13 (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
