FREDERICK FLORIN / AFP
Jeanne Barseghian, mayor of Strasbourg, speaks to journalists in front of Strasbourg station after the collision of two trams, January 11, 2025.
MISCELLANEOUS FACTS – A brutal shock. Two trams collided in Strasbourg this Saturday, January 11 in the afternoon, causing around fifty injuries, firefighters said. “There are no deaths or injuries in an absolute emergency,” wanted to reassure the mayor of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, at the microphone of journalists. The elected official, however, mentions people in a “state of shock”, and several victims of “ fractures ».
The accident took place around 3:30 p.m., in the tunnel leading to the stop serving Strasbourg station. “There was a brutal collision between two trams”described the mayor of the capital of the Grand Est region. A man who was on one of the trams said that during the collision “the windows shattered the doors flew away. It was panic,” he declared to the Republican East.
A video from a witness on social networks shows a chaotic scene with two trams seriously damaged in the tunnel, near the smoky station. One of the trams appears to have derailed due to the impact.
“We have around fifty relative emergencies with non-vital injuries, scalp wounds, one or two collarbone fractures, a sprained knee, things like that. Especially traumatology”explained Controller General René Cellier, director of the Bas-Rhin fire and rescue service.
“A reversal of the tram”
More than a hundred firefighters arrived on site in the late afternoon, and a large security perimeter was established in front of the station. An investigation was opened to clarify the circumstances of this accident.
Strasbourg Mayor Jeanne Barseghian expressed shock ” due to a tram reversing ». The elected official also specified that the two tram drivers are in a state of shock, but not injured.
Patrick Maciejewski, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois (CTS), explained that there had been demonstrations in the city center of Strasbourg, which disrupted normal tram traffic. “It was necessary to reorganize and put a certain number of trains on hold. There was a traffic jam and this train got stuck in the middle of the hopper. And this stopped train, we don’t know why, started to move backwards”. She picked up speed and hit the other train waiting at the station.
Strasbourg, the first large French city to have put a tram network back into service in 1994, had already experienced an accident, in exactly the same place, at the end of October 1998. A tram had already collided with another in the tunnel under the station, a accident due to excessive speed of one of the two trains which left 17 injured.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.fr
