HUALIEN – Salvage teams began removing mangled train carriages today after Taiwan’s worst rail disaster in decades killed at least 50 people, as flags flew at half-mast across an island plunged into mourning.
Officials said yesterday’s devastating collision was caused when a parked railway maintenance vehicle slipped down an embankment and onto the tracks.
A train packed with as many as 500 people at the start of a long holiday weekend then hit the truck just as it entered a narrow tunnel near the eastern coastal city here.
Prosecutors said they are seeking an arrest warrant for the truck driver, who may have failed to secure the parking break.
Rescuers described an appalling scene as they rushed into the tunnel and found the front of the train pulverised into a twisted mesh of metal.
“Car No. 8 had the most serious injuries and number of deaths,” rescue worker Chang Zi-chen told reporters today, referring to the most forward passenger car.
“Basically, more than half of the carriage was split open, and bodies were all piled up together.”
Specialist teams spent hours extracting victims and survivors yesterday.
Today, focus shifted to removing carriages now blocking half of the sole train line down Taiwan’s remote and mountainous eastern coastline.
An AFP reporter at the scene said the most heavily damaged carriages in the tunnel have yet to be extracted.
Rescuers said there could be more bodies in the wreckage.
‘Really devastating’
The Interior Ministry ordered all flags to be lowered to half-mast for three days, while President Tsai Ing-wen visited the wounded at hospitals here.
“Government agencies are making an all-out effort in the hope of minimising the impact of the disaster, so the deceased can rest in peace and the injured can recover soon,” she told the press.
The crash yesterday morning took place at the start of the Tomb Sweeping Festival, a four-day public holiday when many Taiwanese return to villages to tidy the graves of their ancestors.
More than 175 people were rushed to hospital. A French national was among the dead.
Survivors gave terrifying testimony of their ordeal in the train after the crash.
Many of those on board were standing in the aisles because the route was so busy with those leaving the capital, Taipei, for their home villages.
“I saw bodies and body parts all over the place, it’s really devastating,” a man surnamed Lo told the Apple Daily newspaper.
“Humans are fragile, and their lives are gone all of a sudden.”
Morgues here operated through the night, preparing bodies for devastated family members.
Officials have warned that the death toll may rise because some body parts have yet to be properly identified.
Investigators are focusing on how the maintenance truck could have slipped onto the tracks.
The driver, who has been questioned by prosecutors, is part of a team that conducts regular landslide checks on the mountainous route.
Officials think he may have failed to properly engage the parking brake.
Apple Daily reported that prosecutors have raided the offices of the company contracted to do the trackside maintenance work.
The crash looks set to be one of Taiwan’s worst railway accidents on record.
Its last major train derailment was in 2018 and left 18 people dead on the same eastern line.
It was the island’s worst since 1991, when 30 passengers were killed and 112 injured after two trains collided in Miaoli.
Other major crashes that killed dozens took place in 1981, 1978 and 1961.
Taiwan’s most deadly rail disaster on record was in 1948, when a train caught fire and 64 people lost their lives. – AFP, April 3, 2021
