Dehydration in the ICE An affected person reported

Dehydration in the ICE: An affected person, who was in a defective train of the German course, reports.

(12.07.2010) Chaotic and life-threatening scenes took place last weekend in numerous trains of Deutsche Bahn. Many passengers suffered a heat shock and dehydrated because the air conditioners had failed in at least three ICE trains. A dehydration can be triggered by enormous heat and leads to internal dehydration of the body. Symptoms include dizziness, palpitations, weakness, nausea and vomiting, anxiety and profuse sweating. In the worst case, sufferers suffer a cardiovascular collapse and suffer from fainting. Especially the elderly and children are particularly vulnerable in such situations. Nina Dehmlow (30) was with her two-year-old daughter on the last Sunday exactly with such a broken ICE train on the road and reported in an interview with Heilpraxisnet.de on the conditions on the ground.

Heilpraxisnet:Ms. Dehmlow, when did you drive the defective ICE? How much time did you have to spend on the train??
I took the train on Sunday, from Berlin to Hannover and back. Luckily the track is not that long, about two hours.

Can you estimate how high the temperatures were on the train??
Well, I did not have a thermometer, but when I got off the train in Hannover, I thought „Is that nice and cool here?“ and there it was about 38 degrees. So I guess it was already around 50 degrees. The bad thing was that you did not get fresh air. The ICEs have no windows that you can open, the air exchange takes place via the air conditioning.

How did you feel? Did you have physical symptoms?
It was unpleasant, I was very hot. In the meantime, I had the feeling I can not breathe, would probably have collapsed. But then I took a liter of water within a very short time, that helped.

Have you seen how other passengers have reacted to the extremely high temperatures?
Well, they also reacted like me, someday you got the feeling you can not breathe. At this point you have to try to stay calm and drink a lot. But there were also small children, or an infant, they have already suffered a lot. The worst was probably for old people and toddlers.

Have passengers complained? How did the train attendants react??
Complaints already existed, the train attendants also understood and distributed water. Had they not done that, it certainly would have caused circulatory problems for the passengers. But how best to deal with the heat was not told. Also, we were not evacuated in cars in which the air conditioning was still working. On the way back, however, the train attendant told us that we could go to first class with our two-year-old daughter. As well as the air conditioning worked.

Have you received any compensation from the railway?
We all got water, a refund of the fare we did not get offered. Overall, the train attendants tried hard, but I think that they receive no training, how to behave in an emergency. The failure of an air conditioner in an ICE is definitely an emergency, the ride should not have continued. Or the people would have to be distributed to the car in which the air conditioning was still working. In any case, the train has to train its staff accordingly and set up rules of conduct. I think the reason for the failure of the air conditioning systems is a lack of maintenance of the trains, in order to increase profits. The summer does not suddenly fall from the sky and you have to count on such temperatures and wait and equip your trains accordingly. But that did not work in winter. (Sb)

Also read:
Defective ICE Air Conditioning: What Travelers Can Do