银魂爱染香篇 下:China train crash: New Tragedy for Hi-speed Rail

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At least 33 people were killed and 190 others injured in a train crash and derailing accident late Saturday in east China's Zhejiang Province, according to the provincial emergency office.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao called for all-out efforts to rescue passengers and ordered to make rescue work a priority, according to a statement posted on the website of the Ministry of Railways.
The latest result of investigation released early Sunday morning by the Zhejiang provincial government showed that the accident occurred at 8:27 pm Saturday at the section of Shuangyu Town in Wenzhou City, when high-speed train D301 crashed into another bullet train D3115. Four coaches of D301 fell off the viaduct.
Lightning-triggered crash
The accident occurred after high-speed train D3115 was allegedly hit by lightning and lost drive, and then rear-ended by another bullet train D301.
The former train was running from the provincial capital Hangzhou to the southeastern city of Fuzhou, and the latter one traveled from Beijing to Fuzhou.
The trains were administrated by two different regional railway bureaus - train D3115 by the Shanghai Railway Bureau while train D301 by the Nanchang Railway Bureau.
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In the opposite direction, high-speed train D3212 from southeastern city of Xiamen to Hangzhou was also stopped by lightning at about 8 pm Saturday. No passenger was injured, said Liu Jiwei who was on board.
Pan Yiheng, the driver of train D301, was stabbed to death by a brake handle in his chest. He triggered the emergency brake at the last moment of his life, according to the FM93.0 radio of Zhejiang.
At the No.1 Hospital attached to the Wenzhou Medical College, a man about 40 years old told Xinhua he was a passenger from the 16th coach of D3115. There were more than 60 passengers aboard the coach.
"We were trapped in the coach for more than one hour before five of us broke the window and crawled out," said the man, who did not reveal his name.
The five passengers also dragged an old man and a woman out of the coach, but the old man died half an hour later.
A woman surnamed Zhou in Lucheng District People's Hospital in Wenzhou said she was in the 11th coach on train D3115. She and her whole family, four adults and two children, got on the train from Hangzhou.
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"At around 8 pm at the Yongjia station, the train was supposed to stop for one minute, but actually stayed for 25 minutes," Zhou told Xinhua.
"After it moved, we heard a 'bang' and it felt like an earthquake. I immediately held my five-year-old kid to my arms," she said.
Zhou got a bruise in her arms and her kid was injured on the head. Luckily, all of her family members survived.
Gu Xianwei, a native from Guizhou Province, said he was driving by when the accident occurred. "Hearing a huge bang, I saw two trains crashed."
Gu rushed to the scene later and rescued many people out of the coaches with other rescuers.
Liu Hongtao, a host with Voice of Strait, a radio in Fuzhou, was on board the 4th coach of D301 when the collision occurred.
"The train suddenly shook violently, casting luggage all around," he said while being interviewed by China Central Television (CCTV) at 11 pm "Passengers cried for help but no crew responded."
A passenger failed to smash the window with a fire extinguisher but managed to open a crack. Other passengers rushed to crawl out of the train through the crack, he added.
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"One coach perched like a chimney and another was broken in half," Chen Yujie, a host with Zhejiang traffic radio, who was at the scene, described the accident to CCTV.
Both Liu and Chen said they constantly saw lightning.
Constant rescue
Zhao Yide, mayor of the Wenzhou City, said there were more than 1,400 passengers on the two trains, and the uninjured had been transported by buses.
"Searches are underway and we won't allow a single sign of life to slip away," said Zhao.
Two coaches fallen onto the ground were overlapping off the viaduct, which needed cranes and cutting machines for the rescue, Xinhua reporters at the scene said.
Zhejiang provincial department of health organized four medical teams heading to the scene, which comprised medical staff from the Zhejiang No.1 Hospital, Zhejiang No.2 Hospital, Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital and Taizhou Hospital.
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The department also required hospital staff near the site to rush to the scene for rescue work.
The blood center of Zhejiang Province is "fully prepared to guarantee rescue blood." The center was reported to have transported blood to Wenzhou from Lishui and Taizhou cities, according to the FM93.0 radio of Zhejiang.
The radio said hospital blood was in tight supply and called on Wenzhou residents to donate blood to the city's blood center.
More than 200 residents arrived at the Wenzhou blood center Saturday night. Pictures on weibo.com showed that the long queue included teenagers and young people in their twenties. They waited silently in the night for blood donation.
Right after the accident, Minister of Railways Sheng Guangzu rushed to the ministry's control and command center in Beijing to guide the rescue. The latest news was that Sheng was heading for the accident scene.
Sheng called for immediate and the greatest efforts from the rescue teams to save the injured passengers, and he required an in-depth investigation in the accident.
Hu Yadong and Lu Chunfang, deputy ministers of railways, were also hurriedly going to the scene for rescue work.
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At midnight Saturday, the ministry ordered an urgent overhaul of railway and train safety nationwide.
Lu Zushan, governor of Zhejiang Province, arrived at the scene early Sunday morning.
Public worries
The public expressed their worries online over the operation of high-speed trains after the fatal incident. Many said they would not choose to take bullet trains.
A netizen called Su Yan doubted the safety of high-speed trains at the website of Wujin News.
"Who dares to take bullet trains or high-speed trains?" Su Yan said. "The operational safety of China's railways is seriously challenged, and it'll be a long and tough process to earn customers' trust again."
"China should not only learn technologies but also management," said Ma Xiaolin, a well-known public commentator.
Cai Chengping, director of the Tokyo-based Asia-Pacific Political and Economic Research Center, said at his microblog at weibo.com that Japan had suffered similar train derailing, but the safety condition improved a lot afterwards.
"China should learn from Japan on dealing with accidents," he said.
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Actually, problems with China's fledgling high-speed railway have been in the spotlight in the past weeks after the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway started operation on June 30. Trains on the route have been delayed for at least three times because of power failure or lightning factors.
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35 dead, 200 injured in China train collision
A train collision on Saturday (July 23) in eastern China's Zhejiang province left 35 dead and nearly 200 injured, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
At about 8:30pm local time, a train lost power after being struck by lightning and was then rear-ended by a second train. Six carriages were derailed, two of which fell from elevated tracks six-stories above ground, according to media reports.
While some reports suggest the collision involved two bullet trains, the Hong Kong media claim that the incident involved two "dongche," China's first generation high-speed trains. Daily newspaper Ming Pao reported that while a bullet train operates at 186mph, the top speed of a dongche train is 155mph.
State media reported that Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu has ordered an "in-depth investigation" into Saturday's accident.
Pictures posted on Chinese websites and microblogs showed a long rail carriage standing vertically, with one end leaning on the viaduct and the other resting on the ground, about 20 meters below.
A second carriage was lying fully on the ground, having apparently fallen completely off the track, with rescue personnel encircling it.
Other photos showed mangled metal sections of one train car and victims being carried away from the scene.
"We heard a 'bang' and it felt like an earthquake," Xinhua quoted one survivor, a woman surnamed Zhou, as saying. "I immediately held my five-year-old to my arms." Her child survived the accident.
An unnamed, 40-year-old survivor told the news agency that he had been trapped in a train car with more than 60 other passengers after the crash.
"We were trapped in the coach for more than one hour before five of us broke the window and crawled out," he said. The five rescued another two passengers, but one died shortly after, the man said.
Xinhua said that each train car has a total capacity of about 100 passengers.
In spite of Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu's promises of detailed investigations into the incident, Chinese high-speed rail dreams have been giving way to nightmares after the country made claims that its high-speed rail technology exceeds that of both Japan's Shinkansen and European bullet trains.
However, the collision of the two trains, operating along the Wenzhou-Fuzhou (Wenfu) line, along with earlier technical failures on Jinhu high-speed trains servicing the newly opened Beijing-Shanghai route, have escalated concerns over the safety of the China's high-speed rail systems and may affect bullet train exports.
China needs to reexamine its high-speed rail design and quality defects, said Taiwan-based newspaper United Daily News. "Why is the Chinese high-speed railway technology so vulnerable and defenseless to rain and lightning?" it asked.
"China should ensure passenger safety before it exports high-speed technology to other countries," the United Daily News added.
Related:Rescue Job between Life and Death---July 23 Rail Crash

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