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January 6, 2000

Norway Searchers Recover 17 Bodies


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Filed at 11:24 a.m. EST

By The Associated Press

RENA, Norway (AP) -- Searchers combing the scorched wreckage of two passenger trains at a crash site in the bitter cold forest recovered three more bodies today as train engineers said they would boycott the line until safety measures were improved.

With the removal of the bodies -- including one of the two engineers -- the total recovered rose to 17. Several were still missing as the search resumed at the snowy crash site about 110 miles north of Oslo.

``Now, we are concentrating on the first car, near the locomotive. It is very twisted and it is very difficult to reach everywhere. We will search it, but what is hidden in that mess is something we don't know,'' Arne Bjoerkaas, of the national crime police, said at the scene.

The head-on collision between a local shuttle train and regional express train Tuesday was one of the worst in Norwegian history. The National Railroad Engineer's Union said today that Norway's 1,100 railroad engineers would boycott the Roeraas Line until safety measures were improved.

The union said engineers will not run trains on the line until the cause of the accident was determined and small stations that have been closed in recent years restored their staff instead of relying solely on traffic controllers working from another site.

``Station staff offer extra security because they call and ask the next station whether the track is clear before a train can leave the station,'' Leiv Helge Olsen, of the union, told newspapers.

The boycott of the line, which runs 155 miles between the towns of Hamar and Roeraas, was to take effect after the wreck was cleared and investigations were complete, allowing the set of tracks to reopen.

The announcement of the boycott followed the disclosure of a critical report by the national railway safety board -- called the Norwegian Railway Inspectorate -- on the railroad's safety standards.

The trains, one going south and one going north, raced at each other at about 55 mph around a corner. The engineers had no chance to stop, officials said.

About 20 people were feared dead in all, a far lower number than the up to 35 estimated earlier in the search.

``But there are many places that we have still not searched,'' rescue specialist Trond Simarud said.

The estimates of victims have varied widely because of uncertainty about the exact number of people -- roughly 100 -- aboard the trains.

Of the 30 passengers and crew who were injured, 12 remained in the hospital late Wednesday, some with broken bones.

Simarud said a major worry was a 100-ton locomotive that was overturned and feared highly unstable. It was being held in place by a military tank, a backhoe and wire. The teams hope to lift the engine out with the crane, but it was not clear when that job would begin.

``Moving the locomotive is not one of the first things we will do today,'' he said.

Weather had improved, with temperatures rising above the freezing point, but work was difficult because bodies had to be cut out of the wreckage, and crews had to move with extreme caution.

The trains burned for about six hours after the high-speed afternoon crash, making the rescue effort a nightmare of intense heat from the trains and the bitter cold of the Norwegian winter. Some victims burned alive, just out of reach of frustrated rescuers.

For the second day, friends and relatives of the missing and dead placed dozens of burning candles in the snow near the wreck site.

In a 1998 report cited in today's newspapers, the Railway Inspectorate said the railroad had not adequately followed procedures for making regular, systematic safety checks. Separately, the newspaper Bergens Tidenes said there had been 24 reports of trains passing railway stop signals last year.

The cause of the wreck was under investigation. It appeared that one of the trains might have run a red stop signal, since no technical faults had been found on the line. The TV-2 television network reported that train managers, who remotely monitor traffic, may not have been able to warn the engineers because of a mix-up over cellular telephone numbers.




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