Tragic train crash in Hualien on April 2, 2021

Wait I thought that was a Ma Ying-jeou era initiative? …

EDIT: My bad, I was thinking about the double track (now electrified) connecting Hualien and Taitung. I’ll figure this out eventually…

Guy

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The first Electric Trains reached Hualien in 2003 and Double Track all the way made it in 2005. I remember that it was all Single Track and Diesel Trains beyond Suaoxin when I first went there in 1997 - the fumes in the tunnels were a bit much. 2014 was when Electric Trains made it to Taitung.

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Yea do you remember those blue non air conditioned trains?

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If I recall, the trip to Hualien and return from Taipei in 1997 was on one of the Air-Con DMU trains that are still about today - sets of 3 coupled together, I think we ended up with 6 or 9 cars. I never had a ride in one of the Non Air-Con Blue ones, which I think were finally retired a few months ago when the South Link line was finally electrified.

I remember riding one of these guys—no air con, with open windows and doors—on a local train heading south from Hualien Station. Lots of Indigenous kids riding the train that day…

Guy

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I rode them out to Fulong a few times. Good fun. Different times. Not quite Tommy era, but different times.

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Twenty years ago I took my kids on a day-trip on one of those out of Taitung. Slow travel, stopped at every platform. Fun for a trip, but I’d hate to have to get anywhere on one.

Well, I checked: as per the news, the first car, car number 8, did have the most deaths… because it was full of standing travellers.

Only 3 of the sitting travellers survived in that car. They were sitting in the back.

In other news, they took to the police station for questioning 13 people related to the company that had the contract for the project. However, that is quite murky, with politicians and other characters involved…

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The math/logic doesn’t seem to add up here? How many passengers died in the first carriage, and overall? The total number of seats across the eight cars appears to be 376, so an average of 47 seats per carriage (seems to vary a little, presumably because of fewer seats in the front and back to accommodate the drivers’ compartments). And 498 passengers and crew onboard.

But in any case, I assume that there were at least 30 or 40 seats in the front carriage, and, if so many people were standing, it seems to imply that essentially all of those seats were occupied. If only three of the seated passengers in that car survived, that doesn’t seem to leave much room (approximately 50 total deaths, IIRC?) for many of the standing passengers or those in other carriages to be killed? Conversely, if the high number of deaths in the front carriage was attributable to the number of people standing, it seems inconsistent with the fatality rate being so high for the people sitting.

Seems a bit weird - I can’t see how those assertions tie together. :thinking:

No risk management resulting in extra tragedy.

Was that addressed to someone else? I don’t understand what you mean.

My question about the truck being stuck in the trees… Why aren’t they at least tying cables around the truck, or use the cable on the truck itself to free the truck? Or looping cables around the truck onto the backhoe and then looping the cable on the truck crane to something strong so they could pull the truck back up and avoid the tragedy (and loss of the truck too)?

Or did the guy really think the backhoe could pull the truck back up?

Do those cranes not have outriggers that can enhance its stability in cases like this? Why did they not thought to extend the crane boom over the construction site itself (on the side away from the track) to keep it from tipping further? And then of course hooking the cable of the crane onto other vehicles to keep it from slipping at all (the lever action would ensure that even if the tree broke, it would prevent the truck from slipping off at all).

I feel the operators at the site are not competent and should not be operating equipment at all.

Or they could have somehow stabilized the truck until a towtruck arrived to free it.

And when the truck actually fell onto the truck did they not think to call TRA and stop the train immediately? If they are railway contractors they should have a direct line to them.

I mean it seems the standing passengers were needlessly concentrated at the front of the train where an impact was most likely to occur and the impact would be worse.
Also there were a lot of standing passengers on a high speed train. Any kind of sudden stop could injure people badly.

We know crashes and accidents happen. We should reduce the risk when they do happen.

It seemed to be a max speed high force impact anyway given few sitting passengers survived also.

Just wondering if the seating , standing and carriage design could be improved for such an impact event.

May also be cheaper or more efficient to put sensors and cameras over the entire track .

Assuming that this was not Mr. Lee’s first delivery of tires to the site, I am wondering how he could get the truck in this situation in the first place. There are hundreds of tires further down the slope, so he must have driven the truck down there before. Why did he try to drive down there after the tires had been unloaded? It doesn’t really matter, but I am just curious.

Yeah, I get that of course…but that wasn’t my point. I mean that, given the number of seats and number of deaths, it seems impossible for all of the following things to be simultaneously true:

  • Most of the seated passengers in the front carriage (30-40 minus 3) were killed
  • There were a lot of standing passengers in the front carriage, who also had a high fatality rate, and that these standing passengers are a primary reason for the overall high fatality rate in this first carriage (/train).
  • ca. 50 people in total were killed
  • People in other carriages also died

Do you see where the inconsistency is?

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Car 8 was a carnage as expected, but wow, look at car 7! Only one person died! How did that happen?

It probably stayed on the tracks. I guess not actually from the diagram, but it must have had a soft landing without crashing into walls or anything. Car 8 looked like it hit the wall pretty hard in the cam video.

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It does seem to be an earlier version as well, and/or only showing the people who were dead at the scene (“OHCA”, and the total is only 40). And doesn’t account for severe injuries etc., either. But yeah, the numbers for the other carriages seemed surprisingly low to me as well.

Lee caught lying again

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