The derailment occurred when the layers of colloidal clay and gravel in the embankment that had been cut into the hill gave way.

Shortly afterwards, a mixed train consisting of a locomotive and ten cars came down the tracks, falling down the embankment and landing on the road below.

Of the passengers and crew on board that night, 41 people were injured and at least 42 were killed or died later from injuries sustained in the crash.

Many of the passengers were burned alive as the unreinforced wooden cars caught fire, killing those who had survived the crash itself but were still trapped in the wreckage.

The embankment was built on top of layers of clay, whose bearing capacity had been diminished due to the rains as the ground grew heavier.

The first sign of trouble came when the station guard on duty at Getå Halt heard the telephone wires vibrating between 6:33 and 6:40.

When he got nearby, he found Wahlström, who informed him that the stoker, Carlsson, was buried under the coal.

Upon seeing that the train had derailed, he hurried to Getå Halt to notify Krokek Station what had occurred.

A number of passengers also came forward to be interviewed for the inquiry upon seeing the advertisement the board had placed in the newspapers.

One of the key aims of the inquiry was to establish whether or not acetylene gas, which had been used in lighting, had caused the fire.

The inquiry came to the conclusion, however, that burning coal had been responsible for setting the splintered wood of the train cars on fire.

[9] In addition, the Geotechnical Commission of the Swedish State Railways launched an investigation into the cause of the accident, albeit from a geological perspective.

These exceptional circumstances might have caused the engineers building the line to believe that the bearing capacity of the soil was greater than it actually was.

In 1923, another landslide occurred in the same place, this time causing the road running along Bråvik Bay to collapse.

The investigation into the cause of the accident had a major impact on the development of the field of geotechnics in Sweden.