Disaster in Kaprun 2000 – “The glacier railway was a time bomb” – News

• 20 years ago a fire broke out in the lower section of the funicular in the ski area of ​​Kaprun, Austria.
• The train burns down, 155 people die.
• The reason for the fire was the self-made fan heater: the oil and the filament of the fan heater were the deadly combination.
• The 16 defendants were acquitted in 2004.

On 11 November 2000, a fire broke out in the Kiezsteinhorn, the famous Austrian ski area, at the bottom of the funicular. The train stops in the three kilometer tunnel towards the glacier plateau.

Markus Hiltel, 47, headed a group of travelers. They came to Kaprun with 49 participants, 20 of whom died.

Hiltel is visibly moved when he talks about the incident. He was not on the train at the time. But his father and his girlfriend were on board. The friend died, the father is one of the few survivors. But he doesn’t want to give an interview, his son says his memories are too disturbed. With the last of his strength, his father managed to save himself. Since there were no emergency hammers on the train, the father broke a window with his skis.

The 71-year-old escaped the tunnel along with eleven other passengers, down to the tunnel entrance, where the smoke was not moving. They had to walk nearly 600 meters on an emergency ladder – in clumsy ski boots and in the dark. “They held on to a steel cable and kept falling,” says the son.

The Kaprun disaster is the worst disaster in Austrian postwar history. To this day, there is suffering and the question of whether the 2004 acquittal is really the last legal word for 16 defendants.

The fan heater was rebuilt

“The glacier railway was a time bomb”, is the lawyer Gerhard Podovsovnik, who defends the victims, still convinced. There were many illegal items on board. The “Hobby TLB” fan heater produced by the Baden-Württemberg company Fakir, which according to the court caused the accident, was redesigned by the same operators and therefore lost all certifications. “The fan heater was technically fully functional before the unauthorized conversion.”

In the glacier railway, which was converted in 1993, the drivers reportedly froze from freezing air currents. The fan heaters were installed in a completely unprofessional way, right next to the oil pipes. The oil and filament from a fan heater were a deadly combination, two journalists write in their book “155 – Der Kriminalfall Kaprun”.

The lawyer sees one last chance

The case is closed for Gletscherbahn Kaprun AG. For about 25 years, the funicular, which went into operation in 1974 and took skiers to the area around the 3,200-meter-high Kitzsteinhorn in eight and a half minutes, spokesman Harald Schiffl said. “This is a great story” and a very safe means of transportation, they thought at the time.

The lawyer sees a certain possibility of restarting the civil proceedings. Although there are no prospects in Europe, something can be done via the detour of the United States: eight victims have come from there. When asked about the strongest impression of the court hearing at that time, lawyer Podovsovnik didn’t have to think long: “It was the failure of the Austrian legal system and the overwhelming power of the Austrian ski industry.”