The Fiesch derailment occurred on Friday 23 July 2010, at 11:50 CET when a
Glacier Express
The Glacier Express (GEX) is a direct train connecting railway stations of the two major mountain resorts of Zermatt and St. Moritz via Andermatt in the central Swiss Alps. The train is not an "express" in the sense of being a high-speed train ...
train, from
Zermatt
Zermatt () is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a year-round population of about 5,800 and is classified as a town by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) ...
heading towards
St. Moritz, derailed at low speed between the cities of
Lax
Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...
and
Fiesch
Fiesch is a municipality in the district of Goms in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Nearby Fiescheralp is administered by Fiesch and is accessible by the Eggishorn lift.
It has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its view o ...
,
Canton Valais
Valais ( , , ; frp, Valês; german: Wallis ), more formally the Canton of Valais,; german: Kanton Wallis; in other official Swiss languages outside Valais: it, (Canton) Vallese ; rm, (Chantun) Vallais. is one of the 26 cantons forming the Sw ...
, Switzerland.
Two rear panorama cars were overturned while a third car derailed but remained on the track.
A 64-year-old Japanese woman was killed and 42 people were injured and taken to hospital. The day after the accident 17 persons (16 Japanese, 1 Spanish) were still in hospital care.
The cause of the accident was blamed on
human error
Human error refers to something having been done that was " not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits".Senders, J.W. and Moray, N.P. (1991) Human ...
in that the driver was going too fast. Traffic resumed on Sunday 25 July after repair and the railway had been declared safe by the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (operator of the Glacier Express).
On 7 March 2011, it was announced that the engineer of the train at the time of its crash had been convicted of homicide and negligence, and would face a fine of 15,000
Swiss francs
The Swiss franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is also legal tender in the Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia which is surrounded by Swiss territory. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) issues banknotes and the f ...
.
The
investigated the accident.
References
External links
*
Final reportArchive
(Original report)
**
Japanese translation of the reportArchive
- The IBFRA noted that this is an unofficial provisional translation intended to help Japanese speakers understand the document, and is not legally binding; the original German version is legally binding
{{Coord, 46.403007, N, 8.132672, E, display=title, type:event
Derailments in Switzerland
Railway accidents in 2010
Fiesch Derailment, 2010
2010 disasters in Switzerland
ja:氷河急行#事故