TAIWAN TRAIN DERAILS, 51 KILLED
146 passengers sent to hospitals, says island’s National Fire Agency
AT least 51 people were killed yesterday when a packed train derailed inside a tunnel in eastern Taiwan at the start of a holiday weekend, the island’s worst railway accident in decades.
Officials said the devastating accident could have been caused by a maintenance vehicle falling down an embankment and striking the train before it entered the tunnel near the coastal city of Hualien.
“There was a construction vehicle that didn’t park properly and slid onto the rail track,” Hualien county police chief Tsai Ding-hsien said.
Local media pictures from the scene showed the back of a yellow flatbed truck on its side next to the train. The eight-carriage train was packed with some 480 people heading down the east coast for the annual Tomb Sweeping Festival, a four-day public holiday.
The Taiwan Railways Agency said 146 passengers were sent to hospital on top of the 51 confirmed dead. A French national was among those killed, while two Japanese and one Macau resident were injured.
One female survivor told TVBS news channel of trapped passengers — some crying out for help,
others unconscious.
“There were many people pressed under the seats and others on top of those seats too.”
President Tsai Ing-wen visited an emergency response centre here, and said investigators would get to the bottom of how such a deadly crash could have occurred.
“We will clarify the cause of the incident that has caused major casualties. I hope the deceased can rest in peace and the wounded
can recover soon."
The accident occurred on Taiwan’s eastern railway line around 9.30am. Pictures published by local newspaper UDN showed the front of the train inside the tunnel had been pulverised into a twisted mesh of metal.
Rescuers worked for hours to reach those trapped inside the tunnel and haul them out, using buzzsaws to slice through warped sheets of metal.
Footage released by the Taiwan Red Cross showed specialists with helmets and headlights using the roof of the stricken train to reach people inside the narrow single-track tunnel.
By mid-afternoon, officials said there were no people left inside the carriages. A live Facebook broadcast by UDN outside the tunnel showed a row of undamaged train carriages with rescuers helping passengers escape.
“It felt like there was a sudden violent jolt and I found myself falling to the floor,” a female survivor told the network.
“We broke the window to climb to the roof of the train to get out.”
The annual Tomb Sweeping Festival is an especially busy time of the year for Taiwan’s roads and railways. During the festival, people return to ancestral villages to tidy up the graves of their relatives and make offerings.