Belgian investigators today started analysing how the country's worst rail crash in 35 years came to happen, as work began to clear away the wreckage and officials confirmed that at least one train had run through a red light, according to dpa. At least 18 people died in the crash, and an estimated 80 were injured. The accident provoked railway staff into wildcat strikes in protest at what they saw as a lack of safety on their trains. The accident occurred at the height of the Monday morning rush hour as a northbound train heading into Brussels 10 minutes late smashed into a southbound train leaving the city. The impact crushed the front coaches of both trains and hurled several carriages from the tracks. The wreckage stayed where it lay for more than 24 hours as rescuers looked for survivors and the dead. Salvage work began on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office, which heads the inquiry into the crash, told the German Press Agency dpa. Experts were also on hand to look into the causes of the crash. Until the last wagons were cleared away, the office would not be able to confirm exactly how many people died in the crash, he said. Reports that up to 160 people could have been injured in the crash were exaggerated, with the real number being half that, he said. The spokesman did confirm initial reports that one of the trains had run through a red light immediately before the accident. He could not say which train it was. He also confirmed that one of the two train drivers had survived the crash. Media reports Tuesday quoted eyewitnesses as saying that they had seen him jump from his wagon seconds before the impact. And the spokesman said that workers had already retrieved the two trains' on-board data recorders. The boxes record information such as the speed at which the train was travelling at any given point, together with data on any signals through which it passed. Those recorders are likely to be of key importance in the investigation, but the spokesman stressed that it could take weeks to sift the masses of data they contain to reach a conclusion. The question of who was at fault dominated public debates on Tuesday, after top officials in the company Infrabel, which manages the Belgian railway network, said that the crash could have been prevented if the trains had been fitted with an automatic braking system which would be triggered if the train passed a stop sign. Infrabel and national train operator SNCB had vowed to introduce such a system after a fatal crash in 2001 which was also caused by a train passing a red light. Belgian media quoted unnamed SNCB sources as saying that they had been unable to start installing a new emergency system until 2008 because they were waiting for the European Union to set EU-wide safety standards. EU officials rejected that claim on Tuesday, saying that it was up to member states to guarantee the safety of their national railways. "These accusations are not at all founded," European Commission spokeswoman Helen Kearns told journalists in Brussels. "It is simply too early to jump to any speculation as to the causes," she said, adding that investigations "could take several months." Salvage work on the wrecked trains is set to take several days. Repairs to the destroyed tracks are expected to last still longer. In the wake of the crash, rail workers launched wildcat strikes across much of Belgium, crippling rail traffic. They said that their staff were forced to work in dangerous conditions and under unacceptable levels of stress and fatigue. The crash itself itself caused major disruptions to international traffic passing through Brussels. Eurostar train services to London and Thalys high-speed services to Paris are cancelled until at least Wednesday.
