TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two thirds of the 49 victims who died in the April 2 train accident in Hualien County were passengers with standing room tickets, CNA reported, citing a fact-finding report of the train accident published by the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board (TTSB) on Monday (Aug. 23).
According to the TTSB’s Taiwan Railway train No. 408 Taroko Express accident fact-finding report, the causes of death for most of the 49 deceased victims were multiple trauma, blunt head trauma, and hemorrhagic shock, per CNA. As the first car of the train was car 8, most casualties were located in cars 8-6, with 37 deaths, accounting for 75.5% of the death toll.
Among the 47 passengers who died in the accident, 30, or two thirds of them, were standing room ticket holders, 13 were seat ticket holders, and the other four’s ticket status could not be determined.
The board said that the number of the deceased from car 4 decreased significantly, and the number became even smaller in the cars after car 4. Around 9:28 a.m. on April 2, the Taroko Express bound for Taitung collided with a truck that fell onto the track less than two minutes earlier after sliding from a side slope of a construction site above the track.
The collision site was located 231 meters from the Heren Tunnel, from which the train emerged, and 39 meters in front of the Qingshui Tunnel, which the train was about to enter. The collision caused all the eight train cars to derail, with the left side of car 8 heavily damaged after hitting the tunnel entrance, cars 7 and 6 decoupling, and cars 6,5, and 4 crumpled and deformed. The accident resulted in 49 deaths and more than 200 injured. .
The report also said that the accident happened on the first day of the Tomb Sweeping Holiday, and Taiwan Railway had notified all its contractors to stop construction during the holiday. However, construction site director Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥) acted in violation of the regulations by transporting used tires to the construction site to store. When he left for the construction site, the truck’s engine couldn’t start, and the problem was temporarily fixed by electromechanical engineers, who told him the truck’s battery was too low and should be replaced, which Lee ignored.
After the truck unloaded the tires, the truck Lee drove stalled near a side slope at the construction site and couldn’t restart. Lee was trying to use the battery of a backhoe at the construction site to start the truck engine, but during the process the truck slid down the side slope and rested on the track, according to the TTSB report.
The truck fell to the track around five seconds past 9:27 a.m. and the train emerged from the tunnel at 27 seconds past 9:28 a.m. The train driver only had seven seconds to react after the train pulled out the tunnel, according to the report. The train driver slammed at the brake and sounded the whistle, but it still collided with the truck at a speed of 123 kilometers per hour and pushed the truck into the tunnel, the TTSB report said.
