How To Train Your Dragon- From One World To Another

Disclaimer:

The Film 'How To Train Your Dragon', is Copyrighted by DreamWorks Animation and Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and released on March 26, 2010

The DreamWorks 'Dragons' were directed by Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders and released in 2013- 2018. I only claim Copyright to my characters and some of the elements of the story that are of my own creation.

The Seconds from Disaster is a US/UK-produced documentary television programme, owned and produced by the National Geographic Society and Darlow Smithson Productions

Chapter Soundtrack(s):

Heartbeat- scary sound effect

Author Warning, Notes:

This symbol (*) means that there's something written about this particular paragraph in the Ending Author's Notes.

Viewpoint Signs:

***MS*** (movie scene)

***EMS*** (end of movie scene)

***WPov.*** (watcher's point of view)

...

Chapter 17 Seconds From Disaster III

I gripped my father's hand tightly in mine, and he squeezed back tightly and leaned his chin gently on top of my head.

...

[Narrator speaks]

But what had been the trigger in causing the fire? The Funicular mountain trains had first opened their doors in the year 1974.

It was an underground train inside a mountain climbing at speeds of 25 km/hour up to a steep 30-degree incline. It was an engineering triumph and the first of its kind.

In 1993 it was modernized, given a sleek futuristic look. The system had been ingenious but simple.

There had been two trains that balanced the other. As one train climbed up the mountain, it's sister train descended the climb.

At the top of the tunnel station, a powerful electric motor and pulley system was used to pull the trains up and down the tunnel-track.

Neither train had an engine or fuel inside, and no drivers, just an attendant at the front who operated the doors of the train.

Each of the two trains had two coaches with eight separate passenger compartments. There was a cab at the front and rear of the funicular for the attendant who had switched back and forth as the train travelled up and down the mountainside.

The machine was the pride of Austria's skiing resorts. Every day more than a thousand people used the train.

And the mountain Funicular enjoyed a perfect safety record...

...

'' UNTIL THAT DAY!'' almost everyone in the theatre hollered out to the screen.

...

But on the day of the February the 11th, 2001, that perfect safety record was destroyed.

And yet, the troubles had begun way back in the time of the trains modernizations.

The attendants' cabs had been made more comfortable; electric fan heaters had been installed to keep the cabs warm during the freezing winter months when temperatures could plummet to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

[the shadowy image of the control-panel was shown]

And the fans had been built in beneath the control panels where smoke had first been spotted by one of the passengers.

When the investigators had checked the manufacturer's instructions for the fan-heaters they uncovered a terrible oversight

The train heater was designed to be used at home, not in moving vehicles.

[the fan-heater is seen spinning around in its casing]

Upon inspecting the 'sister train' for clues, the investigators had made another stunning discovery; the mount for the heating element had broken. Which meant that it could easily have gotten jammed against the plastic casing and thus caught fire.

[a small spark of flame is seen appearing on the fan before its fed into a blaze inside the casing]

The same defect had been found in 4 out of 5 heaters of the same type...

***WPov.***

'' A design fault?!'' Hiccup thought, swallowing the lump in his throat as he thought back to the early morning of the day the last Dragon Raid had occurred.

***MS***

Finding said clue had been a major breakthrough in solving the cause of the disaster, but it didn't close the case...

By itself, a faulty fan-heater could not have possibly started a fire.

But with no fuel on board, how could the fire have grown into an inferno so ferocious it had melted the trains aluminium body and buckled it's steel rails?

14 min before the disaster, a dribble of hydraulic oil had already been dripping down a hydraulic oil pipe into the electric heater which had automatically switched on during station stops...

...

'' Another fault on the train?'' Fishlegs squealed, voice muffled by his palms that he held over his mouth.

'' A mild calibration issue, huh, Hiccup?'' Hiccup silently mocked himself as he remembered back to what he had said to Gobber at the forge. Tears pricked at the corners of his green eyes as he made a vow to himself, that he would make sure that from now on he would thoroughly test each new gadget he created before letting anyone else touch them.

***MS***

A design fault was pieced together by the investigators, and it had been the cause for the overheating of the unit. The fire had broken out unnoticed before the train had even left the station.

With 9 min before the disaster, the train doors had closed and the cables had started pulling the train out of the station and the heaters had switched off automatically.

But it had been too late!

The fire had already taken hold inside the heater, with smoke that had started to rise from the control panel.

With 7 min before the disaster, the train had approached the tunnel.

With 6 min left, six hundred meters into the tunnel the train had unexpectedly come to a stop. The conductor who had been at the front of the train hadn't realized there was a problem.

But why exactly had the train been turned into a flaming inferno? And why had it stopped inside the steeply rising tunnel?

The answer had been a mystery that the investigators had wanted to solve, and said answers had been found on the track itself.

[one of the investigator teams is seen climbing up a staircase beside the rails]

A pool of oily liquid was found on the track that led upwards to the tunnel entrance.

The substance was sent to a forensic lab to be analyzed, and what the results turned out to be was hydraulic oil that was used on the train's braking system.

A highly flammable substance!

...

I could hear gulps from the other watchers as a shadowy form of the train is shown on screen, with a thick red line snaking under the flooring from one end to the other.

And I wasn't feeling any 'higher' at the moment

....

The electric heaters hadn't been the only new thing added to the funicular trains. A hydraulic system was installed on the trains in 1993 refitting.

20 litres of hydraulic oil had run in pipes along the 61m train.

But one question remained, how did the oil escape onto the track?

[an image of the train passed along the track, and a drop of hydraulic oil is seen dropping from the bottom of the train onto the rail below]

Those people aware of the problem with hydraulic oil pipes often not being completely leak-proof would have been quick to say that a small amount of hydraulic oil may have seeped out.

The intact sister train was investigated and the answers had been found in the control panel inside the attendants' cab that housed a hydraulic pressure gauge.

The foreboding discovery was that hydraulic pressure gauge and oil pipes leading to the gauge passed within a few centimetres of the faulty fan-heater.

Flames from the heater could have begun to melt the leaking pipes before it severed them and the flammable oil had gushed out of the pipes onto the plastic covered floor, from where it dripped down onto the tracks below.

As the train had entered the tunnel, the highly flammable hydraulic oil had fed a roaring blaze.

As to the reason for the funicular train's sudden halt inside the tunnel, the Investigators had looked into the designs for the hydraulic braking- system to find the answers they needed.

There was a built-in, fail-safe brake mechanism was discovered in the designs.

Why was this a crucial find? If the pressure in the braking-system had stopped, like it had when the oil had leaked, the breaks would have automatically slammed in, bringing the vehicle into an emergency stop.

Under normal circumstances, it had been a necessary safety feature, but now it had only served to trap the train in the tunnel and stranding the people 600m from help.

The leftover flammable fluid on board had fed the deadly inferno, burning parts of the heater casing and the melting particles had dripped onto the floors of the train compartments.

This had led to the pools of flammable fluid on the floors to ignite.

Two minutes later, the toxic smoke had entered the crowded lower passenger train, followed by flames as the pressurized flammable hydraulic fluid had gushed out to feed the blaze.

At this time some of the passengers had made it out of the smashed window panes.

A minute later, the guard had at last notices the flames coming from the back of the train. He had alerted the control-room and the operator had proceeded to tell him to open the doors and let the people out, but then the intercom had gone dead.

The lights had gone out in the operators' room as a massive power cut happened all over the mountain.

The burning of the cable had short-circuited the entire mountain area.

Cable cars had stopped climbing or descending and ski-lifts had ground to a halt. Automatic doors had failed at the top station.

All because the blaze had burned through a vital cable that had run alongside the track and through the tunnel.

***WPov.***

The people of Berk watched in entire silence, trying to understand words they had never heard before.

But the scenes shown on the screen said more than words could ever reveal.

Even without understanding what some of the words meant the scenes told a clear enough story.

Many people had been killed that day because of a fire that had started from a simple object.

***MS***

And with so many dead, people wanted to know if the train attendant ever had the chance to open the passenger doors.

The answer to that had ended up being gruesome; the doors had been opened using a manual switch that worked through an onboard battery.

The proof had been in what the foragers found outside the doors of the train.

The bodies of people!

Many of those unfortunates who had died had not made it past fifteen meters from the burning wreckage.

But what had those twelve surviving people do differently than the others, some well able-bodied men and women, perish in the flaming tunnel?

The answer was in the way the tunnel had been built at a steep angle of almost 30 degrees.

When the fire had broken out, the tunnel had not behaved like those that had been built differently.

Normally, during a fire in a tunnel, the heat and smoke would have had nowhere to go but the roof from where it then would have spread out in both directions. But when the tunnel was inclined with an opening on the other side, all the smoke had risen upwards.

Therefore the decision as to which escape route to take had been critical for survival.

Should they have gone upwards away from the heat and flames, or downwards towards the blazing inferno?

Only twelve individuals had ended up on the decision to brave the fire and heat and had survived to tell the tale.

The rest of the people who had perished had all headed upwards towards what they had believed was safety.

***WPov.***

'' But it was just the opposite,'' I thought just as the next image flickered onto the screen.

I could feel my face running completely pale and stricken as I stared at the scene beginning to play out in front of me.

Or rather, two scenes happening in tandem with each other...

***MS***

Sigrun was holding tightly onto her young daughter's hand as she had practically dragged her along behind her.

The fear on their faces was palpable even in the dim lighting of the fire coming from the blazing wreckage.

[at that same moment, back at the hotel where two members of the 'Aho' family had been left to peacefully sleep a few more hours, the older of the twins suddenly sprang upright in bed. She had been between sleep and wakefulness when her ears had suddenly been assaulted by something that had been like a person crying out in distress]

'' Mom! Mom, I'm scared! The smoke feels like it getting thicker,'' Sonja coughed out to her mother.

[and what was worse, there was nausea present and Ronja's head was pounding behind her eyes. She felt light-headed and her breathing was laboured.

She coughed harshly to clear her throat, but it did her no good]

'' Cough, cough, cough... don't try to talk, Sonja! Just ... cough... HURRY!'' the auburn-haired mother cried out hoarsely as she pulled her daughter forward.

But no matter how determinately Sigrun had tried to lead her daughter towards safety, the two of them eventually found themselves succumbing to the smoke.

[Ronja lifted a hand to her chest and forced herself to breathe despite every breath rattling and aching inside her chest. Underneath her fingertips, her pulse raced like that of a small animal's.

Whimpering, Ronja lifted her other, free, hand up to rub against her eyes that she now realized felt extremely irritated. In fact, the corners of her eyes felt like they were being burnt. And it wasn't just there.

Her whole body felt like fire was burning at it]

The steps of both Sigrun and Sonja had begun to falter tremendously, and they couldn't stop themselves from falling forward onto their knees.

[then nausea made Ronja's stomach turn. She quickly rolled to the other side of the bed with a groan.

She gagged a few times before finally vomiting, harshly. The excretion dripped down onto the floor with a sickening splattering sound; the door on the other side of the room was quickly opened just then, and rapid footsteps hurried across the floor.

Ronja's head was spinning around, and she felt much too weak to lift up her head.]

Sigrun and Sonja collapsed against the stairs, still clinging to hands and facing each other. Ronja's myriad shaded eyes were wide and fearful. Sigrun's forest- green eyes were just as fearful as her daughter's and desperate beyond words.

[ the vomiting had not made Ronja feel better, and now her throat was beginning to spasm, too. Her breaths had turned wheezing.

'' Oh Gods, Ronja!''

Ronja tried to speak as she felt her father pulling her upright on the bed.

'' Just breathe, child! Breathe,'' Klaus exclaimed, his expression incredibly worried.

'' Dad, I feel awful,'' Ronja wanted to say as she weakly looked up into her father's quite startled expression.

But she couldn't voice any of her thoughts. Her sight was soon obscured by spots and darkness was beginning to form around the edges of her pupils.

And then she found herself unable to breathe at all!

Even as she lifted a hand weakly to her throat, Ronja found the blackness now rapidly covering her vision completely and she could no longer see, hear or feel anything around her.

Neither would she know what sort of horror her immediate family member would be subjected to once she had fallen unconscious]

***WPov.***

'' Twin intuition !'' Ruffnut and Tuffnut exclaimed shakily, looking quite pale and horrified at the scenes they had just witnessed.

'' Y-yeah,'' I breathed out, voice strangled.

I could hear children crying again in the background; as well as the shocked murmuring from the adults sitting around the Cinema-tiers.

'' Oh Gods, that was... awful to see,'' Astrid choked out, wiping a hand across her eyes.

''No, it was HORRID,'' Snotlout snapped, sounding like he was fighting back the tears in his voice.

''And what you saw happening to Ronja was just the beginning; it gets worse from here,'' my father spoke defeatedly over the still burgeoning, raised voices within the theatre.

'' It gets WORSE?'' Hiccup exclaimed loudly, voice breaking slightly between the words.

'' How can anything be worse than what we've already seen?'' Fishlegs exclaimed, tears slipping down his cheeks.

My father and I shared a glance with Stoick who had been looking at us with a silent question.

Oh, my father and I knew what happened after I'd fallen unconscious.

***MS***

Klaus lay his daughter back down on the bed when she fell unconscious.

His forehead creased with deepened worry as he reached for Ronja's cell phone (that was perched on bedside-table) even as he peered intently down at his daughter's awfully paled face.

Then he gasped as he saw that Ronja's chest had stopped rising and falling.

Now truly frightened, Klaus leaned forward to press a hand over her daughter's mouth to feel for any airflow.

Nothing...

Klaus leaned his ear against her daughter's chest to feel for any intake of breath and felt... nothing.

Klaus pulled his daughter up in his arms as he himself slid off the bed. His own heart raced in his chest as he laid his daughter down on the firm flooring on the other side of the bed before placing one hand on her forehead and used the other to gently tilt her head back by lifting Ronja's chin.

Klaus pinched Ronja's nostrils closed and breathed into her mouth, all the while checking for a rise in her chest.

After five, steady breaths the father positioned the heel of his palm against the centre of Ronja's chest and started the thirty compressions needed for CPR.

After several heart-wrenching seconds in which the father had to repeat the entirety of the CPR (and then check for signs that it was working), he could finally hear the weak pound of a heart resuming its work, followed by her daughter giving a sudden, choked sound as breathe began to run through her lungs again.

'' Oh thank God!'' Klaus whispered, tears now running freely down his cheeks as he carefully placed Ronja on her side with the uppermost leg at a right angle to the body and pillowed her head carefully with her other arm and hand; with her head to tilted to keep her airways open.

Klaus then finally clicked the cell phone open and called the emergency number to alert what had happened, and to ask for any instructions and facts he may have overlooked of his daughter's condition.

He kept a hand on his daughter's back even as he focused on speaking, and then listening to the person on the other side of the 'speaker'. His eyes never strayed away from his daughter's now rising and falling chest.

He didn't want to miss a potential reoccurrence of her being unable to breathe!

'' D-dad?''

Klaus uttered another sigh of relief as his daughter's eyes started to flutter open, slowly.

'' She has awoken,'' he spoke to the receiver, then paused to listen for a moment, then thanked the person before 'hanging up'.

'' D-dad?''

'' Yes, I'm here,'' Klaus answered and soothingly stroked Ronja's back when she shifted, wincing and grimacing.

'' M-my chest h-hurts,'' Ronja rasped out.

'' Shh... I know, and I'm sorry,'' Klaus murmured, using his other hand to brush away damp strands of hair off her daughter's face.

'' I had to resuscitate you, Ronja. You couldn't breathe, and your heart stopped beating.''

Ronja peered up at her father's face in sheer disbelief, but at the sight of her father's still very stricken complexion, she found herself believing him.

'' I- I don't know what happened, dad. I- I felt awful and now... I just feel empty, somehow, and it's not because I threw- up,'' she whimpered, tears starting to slide down her cheeks as she tried to sit up.

'' Shhh... it's okay, Ronja. Don't try to sit up yet. I've called the emergency service. Their on their way here to pick you up and drive you to the hospital for a check-up,'' Klaus said soothingly, stopping his daughter from moving with his hand on her shoulder.

Ronja sniffled and coughed slightly as she laid her head back down on her arm and hand. But she smiled when she felt her father run a hand gently through her hair.

His touch calmed her, and so did his voice when he said,'' You're going to be okay, Ronja. Everything is going to be okay.''

End of Chapter Chapter 17 Seconds From Disaster III

....

Author Notes :

The accident in Kaprun happened on November 11th, but I wanted to change the dates a little so that they would coexist with the setup of my characters ski-holiday.

Constructive criticism is always welcomed by me, the Author :)

Appendices:  

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/first-aid/cpr/

https://www.webmd.com/lung/smoke_inhalation_treatment_firstaid.htm#1