Editing Eschede train disaster (section)

===Bridge collapse===
The front power car and coaches one and two cleared the bridge. The third carriage hit the bridge, causing it to collapse, but cleared the bridge. Coach four cleared the bridge, moved away from the track onto an embankment, and hit a group of trees before stopping. The bridge pieces crushed the rear half of coach five. The restaurant coach, six, was crushed to a {{Convert|15|cm|4=0|adj=on}} height. With the track now obstructed completely by the collapsed bridge, the remaining cars [[Jackknifing|jackknifed]] into the rubble in a zig-zag pattern: car 7, the service car, the restaurant car, the three first-class cars numbered 10 to 12, and the rear power car all derailed and slammed into the pile.<ref name="Seconds" />{{Rp|34:25}} The resulting chaos was likened to a partially collapsed [[folding ruler]]. An automobile was also found in the wreckage; it belonged to the two railway technicians killed, and was probably parked on the bridge before the accident.<ref name="Seconds" />{{Rp|36:20}}

Separated from the rest of the carriages, the detached front power car coasted for a further three kilometers (two miles) until it came to a stop after passing Eschede railway station.

[[File:401 051 Eschede-Tk.jpg|thumb|Front power car 401 051 at Munich in August 2007. The power car coasted down the track until it came to a halt a short distance after Eschede railway station. Having sustained only minor damage during the accident, it was repaired and returned to service.]]

The crash produced a sound that witnesses later described as "startling", "horribly loud", and "like a plane crash". People living nearby, alerted by the sound, were the first to arrive at the scene; Erika Karl, the first, photographed the site. She said that, upon hearing the noise, her husband initially believed there had been an aircraft accident. After the accident, eight of the ICE carriages occupied an area slightly longer than the length of a single carriage.<ref name="Seconds" />{{Rp|34:20}}

At 11:02, the local police declared an [[Emergency management|emergency]]. At 11:07, as the magnitude of the disaster quickly became apparent and this was elevated to "major emergency". At 12:30 the [[Celle (district)|Celle district]] government declared a "[[Disaster#Transportation|catastrophic]] emergency" (civil [[state of emergency#Germany|state of emergency]]). More than 1,000 rescue workers from regional emergency services, fire departments, rescue services, the police and army were dispatched. Some 37 [[emergency medicine|emergency physicians]], who happened to be attending a professional conference in nearby [[Hanover]], also provided assistance during the early hours of the rescue effort, as did units of the [[British Forces Germany]].

While the driver and many passengers in the front part of the train survived with minor to moderate injuries, very few passengers survived in the rear carriages, which crashed into the concrete bridge pile at a speed of {{convert|200|km/h|abbr=on|round=5}}. 101 were killed, including the two railway workers who had been standing under the bridge.

ICE 787, travelling from Hamburg to Hanover, had passed under the bridge going in the opposite direction only two minutes earlier. That train had passed the bridge one minute ahead of schedule, while the accident train was one minute behind schedule. Had both been on time, ICE 787 may have also been impacted by the derailment.

By 13:45 authorities had given emergency treatment to 87 people, of whom the 27 most severely injured were airlifted to hospitals.