HUALIEN, TAIWAN — Tragedy struck on the first day of Taiwan’s Tomb Sweeping holiday when dozens of people were killed in the country’s worst train crash in decades. Here’s what happened.
Fifty people died and 202 people were injured on the morning of Friday, April 2, when the 408 Taroko Express train — bound for Taitung County in southeastern Taiwan — struck a crane truck that had rolled onto its track near the Qingshui Tunnel in Hualien County.
According to The Reporter, the busy train was carrying 498 people, including four train staff, when it hit the truck. With only 372 seats available for passengers, 122 people would have been standing.
At the time of the crash, the train was likely to have been travelling at around 80 miles or 130 kilometers per hour. The CNA, citing data from the train’s security cameras, reported that the train’s driver would have had only 6.9 seconds to brake as he emerged from the nearby Heren tunnel, only 250 meters from the truck.
United Daily News’s account of the collision itself describes how the train’s eighth carriage hit the truck just in front of the Qingshui Tunnel, then derailed, crushing against the left-side wall of the tunnel. The next three carriages were also derailed and crushed to varying degrees, and in combination these four carriages make up almost all of the casualties.
Citing the Central Disaster Response Center in Taiwan, The Reporter broke down the casualties as follows: 28 people died in the eighth carriage, one died in the seventh, two in the sixth, and four in the fifth and fourth carriages. One person also died in the third carriage and other bodies were found outside the carriages.
In the aftermath of the incident, thoughts have now turned to who should take responsibility for it. The truck’s driver and construction director of the Six-year Railway Safety Improvement Project at a site 20 meters above where the crash occurred, Lee Yi-Hsiang, issued a public apology for the incident on Sunday, and there have also been calls for a wider review of train safety in Taiwan.
SOURCES: Taiwan Central News Agency, United Daily News, The Reporter, New York Times
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