Taiwan seeks cause of its worst rail crash in decades
TAIPEI, TAIWAN — The conductor of a train that crashed in northern Taiwan, killing 18 people, had reported problems with the power system multiple times before the accident, local news media said Monday.
Among the dead in the Sunday afternoon crash were eight members of a family returning from a wedding, Taiwan’s railway authority confirmed. An additional 190 people were injured in the island’s worst such accident in 37 years.
On Monday morning, the Taiwan Railways Administration released a 12-second video of the moment the Puyuma Express train derailed in northeast Taiwan’s Yilan County. The train was carrying 366 passengers.
The video appears to show the engine beginning to roll over to its left after coming straight off the track before what should have been a turn to the right. The train seemed to show no indication of slowing down before the bend.
All eight of the train’s cars derailed, some knocking over concrete pylons. By Monday morning the wreckage had been cleared from the tracks.
Lai Sui-chin, deputy director of the railway agency’s rolling stock department, said the conductor had noted abnormally low pressure from the air compressor that controls the power system.
“The driver reported the problem many times as the train travelled between Toucheng and Jiaoxi stations,” Lai said, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.
Technicians serviced the train when it stopped at Yilan Station before the accident, he said, after which the driver made no additional complaints about the power system.
Lu Chieh-shen, director of the railway agency, said it was unlikely that an air compressor problem could have caused the train to accelerate, but that it was possible the automatic train protection system had been manually disabled. The system continuously compares train speed with signalling to ensure safe speeds are maintained.
Investigators met midday Monday with the conductor, who was among the injured and had been hospitalized overnight. Lu said the conductor had five years of experience on the job.
The eight family members who died after attending the wedding ranged in age from nine to 67, Tung Xiao-ling, 43, a relative of the victims who was not on the train, told Reuters.
The train accident is the deadliest in Taiwan since 1981, when a collision in Miaoli County, in the island’s northwest, killed 31 people.
The Central News Agency reported that passengers on the train that crashed Sunday said that the emergency brakes had been applied multiple times before the derailing and that illuminated signs on the train had been operating in an abnormal manner.