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Архив новостей / Форум

Japan rail deaths "may be crime"

// 26.04.2005 14:59 //
Officials have searched several railway offices, seized documents and questioned a conductor who was supervising the inexperienced train driver -- who has yet to be found.

At 76 people were killed and 440 injured after the packed train jumped the tracks near Osaka in western Japan on Monday morning and slammed into an apartment building.

A day after the deadly crash, rescuers pulled three more survivors out of the crumpled wreckage but said they did not expect to find anyone else alive. Later, they pulled three more bodies from the wreckage.

Police on Tuesday searched the offices of Japan Rail West and took away boxes of records.

Investigators are focusing on the speed of the train and the inexperienced young driver at its helm -- a new employee with 11 months' experience.

Japan Rail West officials said the driver -- identified in news reports as Ryujiro Takami, 23 -- had still not been found.

Police said they had been able to question the conductor of the train, a man with 15 years experience who was in charge of the young driver. They did not disclose what they had learned.

The Japan Rail West tracks in the area are among the oldest in Japan and do not have an automatic breaking system that slows speeding trains -- a feature that is present on newer tracks.

Meanwhile, mourning families arrived at a gymnasium that had been turned into a makeshift morgue to claim the bodies of the dead.

Even as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized for the accident and vowed to never let it happen again, a passenger train derailed Tuesday after hitting a truck stalled at a crossing in a northern Tokyo suburb.

The wreck rattled commuters already shaken by Monday's accident, but no serious injuries were reported.

The latest accident on one of the world's most complex and heavily traveled rail networks took place in Ibaraki prefecture at 12:48 p.m. (11:48 p.m. Monday ET) after the truck stalled at the Hatori Station crossing, police said.

The truck driver jumped out and activated an emergency alarm, but the train was not able to stop in time. The train's first car derailed, and the truck driver was slightly injured, police and rail officials said.

Meanwhile, rescuers at the scene of Monday's accident pulled three people -- one of them conscious -- from the wreckage by cutting through the metal of the mangled cars.

One rescue official said a number of bodies remained in the wreckage of the train.

Hiroki Hayashi, 19, was recovered from a damaged car after surviving the night with the help of an intravenous drip and drinking water.

"I'm in pain, I can't take it anymore," The Associated Press quoted him as telling his mother in a cell phone call after the crash, according to his 18-year-old brother Takamichi Hayashi.

Survivors told Japan's national broadcaster NHK the train was speeding as it rounded a curve. They said the train had overrun the previous station and had to back up, and that they believe the driver was trying to make up time.

The railway is investigating reports that the train was running more than a minute late before overshooting the final station before the accident.

Analysts said the cause was likely to be a combination of factors, including a possible obstruction on the tracks.

"We hear there was a stone on the rail. We hear the train was speeding. There is also speculation that the construction of the train itself may have been faulty. There could be many reasons," one analyst told CNN.

"Overspeeding could be one possible cause, but there should also have been a system to stop or slow the train down."

Japan Rail West representatives said they were not sure how fast the train was going at the time, but noted it would have to be traveling at more than 83 mph (133 kph) to derail.

Japan's Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa told reporters he would order all of the nation's railway operators to conduct safety inspections in the coming days.

"It's tragic," Kitagawa said at the scene. "We have to investigate why this horrible accident happened."

The first three cars of the seven-car train derailed around 9:20 a.m. Monday (8:20 p.m. Sunday EDT). Police said 580 people were on board at the time of the accident.

Officials said the train hit several cars, but it was uncertain whether they were struck before or after it derailed.

The accident was the worst rail disaster in nearly 42 years in Japan, where deadly train accidents are rare.

A three-train crash in November 1963 killed 161 people in Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.

In Japan's last major accident, five people were killed and 33 were injured in March 2000, when a Tokyo subway hit a derailed train.

An accident killed 42 people in April 1991 in Shigaraki, western Japan.

An earthquake in 2004 caused a bullet train to derail -- the first since the high-speed trains went into service 40 years ago.

CNN



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