Relatives still missing

Families living in the world of hope after horror train crash

A DAY after one of South Africa’s worst train disasters, Masabata Rannyane was desperately trying to determine whether five of her family members, including her nineyear-old daughter, were among the dead.

Since Thursday afternoon, Rannyane has been frantically running between her Virginia home and hospitals in the Free State searching for her sister, brother- in- law, nephew and niece who were travelling with her daughter, Puseletso.

By yesterday afternoon, she told Independent Media, she had just one more hospital to check, before all hope was lost. “I don’t know what to do. I need help,” she said.

Yesterday the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa was in the process of clearing the accident scene and attempting to determine the cause of the derailment that killed 19 passengers and left 138 injured.

The Shosholoza Meyl train had been travelling from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg when it collided with a truck and its two trailers at a crossing in Kroonstad, Free State.

The derailment set several carriages ablaze and some passengers were trapped inside.

Rannyane heard the news when her cousin phoned her in a panic on Thursday afternoon.

Free State Department of Health spokesperson Mondli Mvambi said the team was doing its utmost to help identify the bodies taken from the train’s flaming wreckage.

“We are putting together teams to assist in the identification, and counselling for everyone involved,” he said, adding that DNA testing might be required to identify those who had died.

As Rannyane’s horrific search continued, another family were reunited. Samkelisiwe Madinda, five, and his 11-year-old sister, Aya, had been taken to the Bongani Hospital to be treated for shock. Yesterday, their mother, Daphne, was discovered, also at Boitumelo Hospital, and she and her children were reunited.

Yesterday evening, Free State Health MEC Butana Komphela was still visiting victims of the accident, and had been in contact with the National Commissioner of Police to ensure the provision of death certificates, counselling, contacting the next of kin of the deceased and accounting for all the bodies.

Questions are being raised about drivers not stopping at rail crossings. The United National Trade Union’s Steve Harris said it was a nationwide problem.

Transport Department spokesman Ishmael Mnisi said they were looking at how other countries dealt with the problem.

The secretary of the Friends of the Rail, Steve Appleton, said: “Motorists in this country simply ignore crossings.”

The Friends of the Rail, which runs a heritage rail service from Pretoria to Cullinan, had a near miss when one of their trains nearly collided with a motorcyclist.

“We had the whistle blowing and he didn’t hear us. Then he looks up and fortunately he didn’t stop, he opened up the throttle and we missed him by about 2m,” said Appleton.

Harris and Appleton believe that the Shosholoza Meyl train might have been travelling as fast as 90km/h when it hit the truck. “The problem is that even if they applied brakes, it would take between 500m and a kilometre to stop the train,” explained Harris.

Accident reconstruction expert and mechanical vehicle analyst Martin Graham said the authorities would have their hands full in trying to ascertain the exact cause of the train’s derailment. He said pointing fingers at the truck driver was premature.

PICTURE: EPA-EFE/ER24EMS This picture, made available by ER24EMS, shows rescue workers inspecting the remains of an intercity train that derailed after hitting a truck that was crossing the tracks near Kroonstad. Nineteen people are now known to have died and hundreds more...

PICTURE: AP Ruined carriages at the scene of the train accident near Kroonstad on Thursday. The transport minister says 19 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the collision between a truck and a passenger train.