One dead, three injured in Chongqing subway crash

The Chongqing government has launched a thorough check of civil air defense gates in its subway system after a staff member died in a crash on Jan 8.

Two other workers and one passenger were sent to the hospital for treatment. None of their injuries were considered to be life-threatening.

At about 5 pm, a train running on the new Loop Line struck the underground civil air defense gate that had intruded into the train’s operating area. The first carriage was knocked out of alignment with the track, though it did not derail, and its nose was damaged, according to local transportation authorities.

Civil air defense areas — which are designed as public shelters in the event of a military attack — are enclosed by steel doors. Normally, the doors are open to allow trains to pass.

“At around 5:20 pm, the carriage braked suddenly and began to shake,” a woman surnamed Wu, a passenger, was quoted as saying by Beijing Youth Daily. “Then the lights went off and I heard glass breaking.”

About 20 minutes later, some metro staff members opened the carriage doors and guided about 30 passengers out of the crash area.

“Because this metro line was quite new, there were not many passengers on board,” Wu said. “We were terrified.”

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

The eastern and northern part of the Loop Line was put into operation on Dec 28. The whole loop is 34 kilometers long with 24 stations but only 17 are currently in use.

The city of 30 million people is located in an area crisscrossed by rivers and mountains. It completed its first subway line in 2005, the first in China’s western region.

It currently has 10 lines totaling 313.6 km, the longest metro network in the midwest region and fifth-largest in the country. In 2017, the Chongqing subway system served 740 million passengers.

The metro is also a local attraction for tourists. Video of a train running through a residential building at Liziba Station on Line 2 went viral online, for example.

Hongtudi Station, the interchange station of Line 6 and Line 10, is the deepest subway station in China — 94.46 meters underground.