Caught on a train: Bulgaria's railways prove woefully inefficient in an emergency.

A fatal road accident tested the ability of Bulgaria's state railways BDZ to react to emergency situations, leaving hundreds of passengers trapped on grounded trains. Unfortunately for BDZ, their response was found to be wanting.

At about 2am on August 24 a vehicle crashed into the electrical system, along the Sofia-Bourgas railway, near the town of Belovo. Two young men in the car were killed. The crash was so severe that it knocked out the electricity supply along one of the country's busiest railway lines, leaving 14 trains stranded for more than seven hours while BDZ undertook repairs and tried to substitute the electricity-powered locomotives for diesel ones.

The real problem, however, was BDZ's reaction to the 2am incident. According to numerous reports in Bulgarian media--and from The Sofia Echo's own eyewitness account--the company, which is so far the only provider of public railway transport services, failed to convey that trains on the Sofia-Bourgas railway would not leave for several hours. The accident happened on a Monday morning when many Sofians return home after a holiday weekend in the country. Add the ongoing holiday season and travellers' nerves were in tatters.

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Congestion soon intensified to and from the Black Sea. Those who had left Bourgas and Sofia on the night train at 10pm found themselves at a standstill while those who, for example, arrived at railway stations six hours after the accident were allowed to buy tickets and board trains that BDZ management knew were grounded.

The Sofia Echo witnessed such a situation at Plovdiv railway station where tickets were sold for the 7am Plovdiv--Sofia Express even though authorities knew the service was disrupted. About 20 minutes before departure, the public address system continued to announce the train's platform and departure time. Shortly before 7am, a conductor walked through the carriages and told commuters that the train "would not leave". When asked for details, he said that those who wanted to travel to Sofia should wait, but he could not say when the service would be resumed. Refunds were given if requested but this also meant that passengers had to find an alternative route and transport to return to Sofia, for example. This apparently ruined the working day of more than one company. For those who left Bourgas after 10pm on August 23, however, the pile-up of trains meant six hours of waiting and eight hours of travelling --or a total of 14 hours spent on the tracks.

On arrival in Sofia, TV cameras recorded travellers' opinion of BDZ's notification system and its staff . "We were told nothing for hours", "We were asked to change trains in the middle of the night with no help from train staff ", "We got little if no support from BDZ employees at the railway stations (where trains were put on hold)" were the most common answers as well as "we will never use BDZ again", although, as a state-subsidised monopoly, the company still provides the cheapest, if slowest, transport in the country

It's not us, it's them

The authorities responded with mutual finger-pointing and promises to improve. BDZ hid behind the fact that the railway infrastructure is owned and maintained by another state company, Railway Infrastructure, i.e. fixing the electrical system was not BDZ's problem. BDZ also claimed that it had given all necessary warnings to passengers, a claim proved false by eyewitness accounts.

BDZ succeeded in bringing back the old diesel locomotives but this took time, hence the delay. The Railway Infrastructure company said that it had notified BDZ minutes after the incident happened and the lag in restoring the electrical system was caused by the police investigation into the road crash. Hence work started at 4.30am, two-and-a-half hours after the accident.

Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov tried to draw a line under the incident by ordering both companies to review their emergency response procedures and information systems. Tsvetkov also said that passengers should be given information much earlier when faced with such incidents in the future.