Firefighters, police and paramedics were hailing employees of Norwegian train operator Vy, after fire broke out on board one of Vy’s trains traveling from Bergen to Oslo. The crew managed to get the train to a more accessible area while evacuating passengers at the same time.
There were more than 220 passengers on board the popular Bergensbanen line when fire broke out while the train was in a remote area south of the Nesbyen station on Tuesday afternoon. Since the fire, the cause of which remained unclear, threatened to spread to adjacent forest, the crew saw a need to move the train while also quickly evacuating passengers.
“Everything went calmly,” said Caroline Utti, a reporter for state broadcaster NRK who happened to be on board and among those heading home after the Easter holidays. She went into work modus and could take photos and report how passengers needed to hike through some woods before they could gather in a nearby barn. Several passengers had to leave their luggage on the train before they ultimately were driven by bus to their final destinations.
Fire-fighters praised how the crew thought to move the train to a more accessible area, evacuate the carriages and disengage those on fire. “In our view that was fabulous,” Dag Muggerud of the Hallingdal Fire and Rescue Service told NRK. “The chief engineer and personnel did a great job.” He also thinks they helped limit damage and save lives. No one was injured but it remained unclear when the train line could reopen.
(For photos, click here to NRK’s coverage, in Norwegian).
