At least 54 people were killed and over a hundred injured after a packed express train derailed in a tunnel in eastern Taiwan on Friday morning, according to authorities, in the worst train crash on the island in at least 40 years.
Journalist Katherine Wei, reporting from Taipei, said that the rescue efforts were completed before the sunset in Taiwan and there were no passengers left trapped in the carriages.
Images from the scene showed carriages in the tunnel ripped apart by the impact, with others crumpled, hindering rescuers in their efforts to reach passengers, although by mid-afternoon no one was still trapped.
“People just fell all over each other, on top of one another,” a woman who survived the crash told domestic television. “It was terrifying. There were whole families there.”
The eight carriage train, on its way from Taipei to Taitung came off the tracks at 9:28 am (01:28 GMT) in a tunnel north of Hualien, according to the Taiwan Railways Administration. The service was so busy that some people were forced to stand and thrown through the air as it derailed.
At the site, Transport Minister Lin Chia-lung told reporters that it had been carrying about 490 people, higher than an earlier figure of 350 provided by fire authorities.
Katherine Wei said that the injured were being rushed to hospitals after being rescued following a tough process to enter the tunnel of the accident.
“It was difficult ambulances and firefighters to reach to site of the crash, because there are only two main highways reaching Hualien from bigger cities such as Taipei and New Taipei city.”
The official Central News Agency said the truck was suspected to have slid off the sloping road into the path of the train, as its handbrake had not been engaged, and added that police had taken in its driver for questioning.
The fire department showed a picture of what appeared to be wreckage of the truck beside the derailed train, with an aerial image of one end of the train still on the track next to the construction site.
On Twitter, the island’s president Tsai Ing-wen said emergency services had been “fully mobilized” to rescue and assist passengers and railway staff.
“We will continue to do everything we can to ensure their safety in the wake of this heartbreaking incident,” she wrote.
Friday marks the start of tomb-sweeping day, known as Qing Ming, and the beginning of a long holiday weekend in Taiwan when thousands of people usually to travel across the island to clean the graves of their ancestors and use their free time to visit popular tourist sites like Taroko National Park.
Hualien is a popular scenic town next to eastern Taiwan’s famed Taroko Gorge, and Taiwan’s eastern railway line, which opened in 1978, is a popular tourist draw because of its dramatic coast line and scenery.
One passenger, with the family name of Wu, told CNA he recalled the accident as a bang. When he woke up, the train had stopped and passengers were using their mobile phones to find their way around. He said the car in which he was travelling was badly damaged, but that they managed to escape into the tunnel after about an hour. Another passenger told the agency that she had used her luggage to smash the train window and escape.
Taiwan’s last major railway accident was in 2018 when a passenger train in eastern Taiwan’s Yilan derailed, leaving 18 people dead.
In 1991, 30 were killed in Miaoli when two trains collided. More than 100 people were injured.
Construction on the island’s railway network first began in the late 19th century and accelerated during Japanese colonial rule.
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