Lower Saxony
Excavator accident with two dead and 10 injured children
An ambulance drives through a city with blue lights flashing. (icon image) photo
© Nicolas Armer/dpa
Children and their fathers meet for a camp. But the event ends in tragedy.
In an accident during an excursion with an excavator, a child and an adult died in Toppenstedt (Harburg district).
Ten other children were injured in the evening, some seriously, four of them had to be taken to clinics by helicopter, as a spokesman for the fire department told the German Press Agency.
The accident happened at a tent camp that fathers had organized with their children of kindergarten age. A group was driven “for amusement” by an excavator over a dirt road. The people were in a kind of lattice box that the wheel loader had lifted up. The accident happened when the box – probably due to a technical defect – broke off and fell to the ground, said the fire department spokesman. The spokesman could not say whether children are in mortal danger.