China sacks officials as 35 die in train collision

CHINA SACKED three senior railway officials yesterday after a collision between two high-speed trains killed at least 35 people. On Saturday night a bullet train rammed another train, causing four carriages to fall off a viaduct and raising concerns about the safety of the country’s flagship high-speed rail project.

The first bullet train was travelling south from Hangzhou, capital of the eastern province of Zhejiang, when it was struck by lightning and the power went out. The second train ran into the back of the first at Wenzhou, and initial investigations showed that four coaches of the moving train fell off the viaduct, said Xinhuanews agency.

The cars plummeted up to 20m from the elevated section of track.

Both trains were headed for Fuzhou in eastern Fujian province. “The train suddenly shook violently, casting luggage all around,” Liu Hongtao, a reporter travelling on the train said.

“I got out of the wagon by the light of my mobile phone, and then I found out our train has collided with another train, and that several carriages had already fallen off the bridge. I heard a lot of people knocking at the window, crying and screaming. It is terrible to see what was happening, those carriages which fell off the viaduct are completely destroyed. There are a lot of people injured, some of them cannot move,” said Mr Liu.

TV footage showed one train carriage lying on its side beneath the viaduct, with another leaning vertically against the bridge. The ministry of railways said the first four carriages of the moving train and the last two carriages of the stalled train derailed.

“At around 8pm at the Yongjia station, the train was supposed to stop for one minute, but actually stayed for 25 minutes,” a woman surnamed Zhou, who was sitting with her family in the 11th coach of the train that was struck from behind, 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.

As well as the 35 dead, more than 190 people were being treated at hospitals, and 1,500 passengers were taken to a middle school, while hundreds of residents from Wenzhou had given blood after calls from the local blood bank.

Both trains were “D” trains, or first-generation bullet trains which are not as fast as the new €23 billion Beijing-Shanghai line, which was unveiled on June 30th to great fanfare and which halves the rail journey time between China’s capital and its financial hub to less than five hours.

The line has suffered numerous hitches in its first weeks of operation, including power cuts and other malfunctions.

This is the first major accident on China’s high speed rail network since it was launched in 2007. The project is symbolic of China’s efforts to modernise and showcase its engineering skills and the government has spent the equivalent of billions of euro expanding the network. However, it has also been prone to corruption.

Railways minister Liu Zhijun was dismissed this spring amid an investigation into unspecified corruption allegations.

President Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao called for an all-out effort to rescue passengers still trapped in the wreckage hours after the collision.

It was China’s worst train accident since April 2008, when a train travelling from Beijing to the eastern coastal city of Qingdao derailed and crashed into another train, leaving 72 people dead and another 416 injured.

Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the rail ministry, said the accident was caused by equipment malfunction linked to the storm.