Taiwan train crash: An unprecedented horror

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  Taiwan train crash: An unprecedented horror

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• What happened: The Taroko Express, en route to Taitung with 488 passengers aboard, was about to enter a tunnel when it was hit by a driverless truck. The dead include one French national, while those injured include people from Japan and Macau. The eight-car Taroko Express carrying 496 passengers was en route to the southeastern coastal city of Taitung from New Taipei City when the accident happened near Chongde, Hualien, at about 9.30am.
• Details: This was Taiwan’s worst train accident in decades, and killed at least 50 people and injured 146 others. It was caused by a runaway truck that rolled down a hillside from a construction site above the track. 
• More Details: The train was about to enter Chingshui Tunnel when it collided with a truck that had rolled down an embankment from a construction site. The first two carriages of the train derailed after striking the truck and forcing parts of it into the tunnel. The train’s engineer, Yuan Chun-hsiu, 33, and mechanic, Chiang Pei-feng, 32, who were travelling in the first carriage, were killed on impact.
• Freeing the trapped: The Hualien Fire Department said that as of 6.30pm all of the passengers who had been trapped in the train carriages had been freed.  Several of the following carriages were crushed as they slammed into the walls of the tunnel. The carriages at the end of the train that did not reach the tunnel were less badly damaged. 
• The brakes: Authorities are inspecting if the truck’s brakes had been put on properly or if there were other human or mechanical errors involved. 
• Leaders: Taiwanese leaders, including President Tsai Ing-wen and Premier Su Tseng-chang, ordered the relevant authorities to do their best to support the rescue effort and ensure proper treatment for the injured passengers. 

1. Government departments would lower their flags to half-mast for three days from Sunday as a mark of respect for those killed, according to Su’s office.
2. Tsai, who went to Hualien to visit some of the people in hospital, said the authorities had already started an investigation into the cause of the accident and would make public its findings as soon as possible.
3. The rescue operation was hampered by the fact that some of the carriages had been badly mangled. The limited space in the narrow tunnel made it difficult to locate the survivors and get them out.
4. Taiwanese media said the train had been crowded and that many passengers were standing at the time of the crash, which meant they were tossed about by the force of the impact.
5. The accident happened at the start of a long weekend for the traditional Chinese tomb sweeping festival, when people return home to remember their late ancestors by cleaning their graves.

• Earlier accidents: In 2018, a Puyuma Express train derailed in northeast Taiwan’s Yilan county, killing 18 people and injuring 170. Thirty people were killed in a train crash in Taiwan in 1981.

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