Rescuers search site after train crash

Rescuers searched through wreckage today after one of Taiwan’s fastest passenger trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, killing at least 18 people and injuring more than 180 others.

The Puyuma express ran off the tracks late Sunday afternoon as it went around a bend, throwing train cars into a zig-zag pattern with five left lying on their sides. There was no immediate word on the cause. Survivors interviewed by Taiwan’s official Central News Agency said the driver had applied emergency brakes multiple times before the train derailed.

Most of the deaths were in the first car, and it was unclear whether other people were trapped in the train, according to a government spokesman, who spoke on the customary condition of anonymity.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defence spokesman Chen Chung-chi said. “Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away,” Chen said.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visited the crash site in Yilan County in the island’s northeast early Monday morning and said her government had instructed the authorities to work quickly to investigate the cause of the derailment.

The train had been carrying more than 360 passengers from a suburb of Taipei in the north to Taitung, a city on Taiwan’s southeast coast.

Earlier, the government put the death toll as high as 22, but the National Fire Agency, citing the Cabinet spokesman’s office, later reduced that figure and blamed a miscalculation.

Local television reports said passengers tried to escape through windows and bystanders offered gathered to help before rescuers arrived.

One of the eight cars tipped at about a 75degree angle, with its entire right side destroyed.

Fearing people may be trapped beneath the car, firefighters with lights on their hard hats peered underneath as a crane prepared to upend it. The firefighters were joined by soldiers and Buddhist charity workers who gathered on both sides of the tracks.