Five Americans among train fire victims

NANCY, France -- A fire on an overnight train in eastern France filled a sleeping car with deadly smoke Wednesday, killing 12 people -- including five Americans from the same family -- and driving panicked passengers to smash windows and jump to safety.

The train, like others in Europe, had no smoke detectors even though cigarette smoking is allowed in designated cars.

Fatal rail accidents are rare in France, where trains are known for speed, safety and efficiency.

Accidents, however, are not unknown in Europe: A high-speed train derailed in Germany in 1998, killing 101 people.

Wednesday's blaze, which also injured nine people, was initially blamed on an electrical short-circuit. But the French rail authority SNCF said that was premature and the cause was under investigation.

The owner of the sleeping car, German national railroad Deutsche Bahn, said the fire apparently started in the compartment of a train attendant. Smoke was blamed for the deaths.

The fire began shortly after 2 a.m. as the train with 150 passengers passed through the city of Nancy on its way to Munich, Germany, according to SNCF. The train had left Paris three hours earlier.

Among the dead were five Americans -- two women, a man, an 8-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl; three German men; a Russian man and woman; a Hungarian man and a Greek woman. Richard Lankford of the U.S. Embassy in Paris refused to release the American victims' names pending notification of their families.

Authorities in Meurthe-et-Moselle prefecture said one American was among the nine people injured. All but one was treated at a hospital and released.

A train worker alerted authorities at about 2:15 a.m. when he spotted smoke pouring from a car as the train passed the Nancy station. Flames shot 9 feet into the air, and thick black smoke billowed out of the car's windows.

Survivors told of panic inside the train as screaming passengers escaped by breaking through the car's windows and climbing out once the train had stopped.

French survivor Marc Giraud said smoke filled his compartment after the door was opened. He grabbed an emergency ladder, smashed the window of the compartment and those inside crawled out.

"We got out through that mouse hole," Giraud told TF1 television. "I don't know how we got out through there."

Susan Stroembum, who was sleeping in a different car when the fire started, said she saw flames from her window when she awoke.

"Somebody screamed, 'The train is burning,"' Stroembum said in Stuttgart's main station, where 55 survivors were met by Deutsche Bahn with food and drink.

Firefighters rushed to the train, which stopped on a track about 800 yards outside the Nancy station. All the dead were inside the charred sleeping car, said regional official Jean-Francois Cordet.

"The catastrophe was amplified by the fact that it was in a confined space. The fire was limited, and the amount of smoke very quickly became catastrophic," chief firefighter Jean-Louis Modere said.

Police investigators were on the scene and a team of psychologists was sent to help survivors. Passengers were taken to a local gymnasium.

The charred sleeping car, No. 261, was built in 1964 and underwent extensive renovation in 1999 and an overhaul in 2001, according to Deutsche Bahn spokesman Dieter Huehnerkoch. The company said the car had its last regular technical check on Monday.

Deutsche Bahn said sleeping cars are generally not equipped with fire or smoke detectors, but do have fire extinguishers. Dominique Martin, a spokeswoman for SNCF, said no trains in France carry smoke detectors. The Amtrak system in the United States makes some use of detectors and smoking is banned on short-distance routes.

The German railroad was sending experts and two board members to Nancy to take part in the inquiry.

Deutsche Bahn marketing chief Hans-Gustav Koch told German TV the fire probably began in the sleeping car attendant's compartment. "We believe that the people who regrettably died were asphyxiated in their sleep," he said.

Fatal train accidents have hit France in the past. In 1997, 13 people were killed when a train in southwestern France burst into flames after crashing into a truck filled with gasoline.