Читать книгу 155 - Hubertus Godeysen - Страница 15

Public prosecutor Eva Danninger-Soriat is absorbed in her files when a colleague knocks loudly on her door, comes in and tells her to turn on the radio right away. "There’s been an accident in Kaprun," she says, "They’re about to give the latest report."

Danninger-Soriat turns on the radio and hears: "The fire department reports that the glacier train caught fire in a tunnel in Kaprun at 9:11 am. Up to 180 people are in the ski resort train. Emergency services have been activated. Seven helicopters and dozens of fire brigades and ambulances have been deployed. More information is not available at this time."

She turns the radio off again. Her thoughts are in Kaprun. Her concern and distress mingle with hope knowing the fire brigade is already on site. She has seen plenty of evidence of the capability of the firemen and the quality of their technical equipment. She tries to stay calm—after all, the glacier railway is among the most modern funicular systems in the world. It should also be one of the safest. Then she picks up her dictation device again and resolves to turn the radio news back on at noon.

When she listens to the news again, the reports are much more unsettling. The governor of the province of Salzburg, Franz Schausberger, has already arrived in Kaprun to direct the further efforts of the fire brigade and other emergency responders. From the radio come constant updates, each more ominous than the last. Obviously, the fire in the glacier-railway tunnel is significantly larger than initially assumed. The first deaths are reported. Firefighters are trying to get to the burning train. She hears about a terrible catastrophe with no precise numbers yet, but there seem to be many dead. Eva Danninger-Soriat is shocked, as are the few colleagues she encounters that Saturday at the provincial courthouse.

Feeling anxious, she returns to her office. She thinks back to riding the glacier railway with her family a few years ago, and is gripped by fear. She remembers a switch in the dark tunnel where the two trains pass each other. There must be emergency spaces or shelters for passengers in there, she thinks, and the thought encourages her. Following the infernos in the Tauern tunnel and the Mont Blanc tunnel, legal requirements for road tunnel safety increased enormously. Fire safety is improving everywhere, the public prosecutor thinks. A glacier railway in a tunnel, which thousands of skiers ride up to the beloved Kitzsteinhorn daily, must have safety standards that are at least as stringent as in other places. But her sense of concern increases every time she remembers her trip there.

She sits at her desk between files that she’s already worked on to her right, and to her left, a higher stack of files she has yet to deal with. She opens the next one, but it’s increasingly hard for her to concentrate on her work and set her thoughts of the Kaprun fire aside.