Saturday's accident on the Alishan railway cost 17 lives and injured scores of people. A helicopter involved in the rescue operation also crashed, although no one was injured. The train derailment dealt a crippling blow to the nation's tourism industry -- which has just begun to recover from the damages it suffered from the 921 earthquake.
Such a major accident at a key tourism spot does not bode well for the Executive Yuan's "Tourism Year One" project, which has just been launched. The impact of this incident must not be underestimated. Alishan holds an irreplaceable place in the nation's tourism industry. This is not merely because of the pristine forests, ancient trees and mountain trails, but also because of the 90-plus year old railway itself. The Alishan railway is one of the few mountain railways in the world. It is also the only non-cogwheel mountain railway in the world. Its steep climb from 30m to 2,270m above sea level is also unrivaled. Alishan has long been a symbol for the nation.
It is now almost certain that human error was to blame in both accidents on Saturday. The derailment occurred because the brake stopcock in the locomotive was turned off, causing the train to lose its brakes. It is the responsibility of both the train conductor and driver to check the stopcock before each trip and make sure that the stopcock is turned on. But no one did that on Saturday.
The pilot of the rescue helicopter knew his payload, but the sight of injured train passengers begging him for help prompted him to "take pity" on them and overload his chopper with 14 people.
All public venues and vehicles have strict, many-layered security designs, but safeguarding that security depends on man. The derailment would not have occurred if the engineer and driver had checked the stopcock in accordance with standard procedure. The crash-landing would not have occurred had the pilot stood firm on load limits. Even the safest security systems in the world will fail if the operators do not follow procedures.
Other recent tragedies have reinforced this truth. The horror of the Daegu subway fire in South Korea last month was compounded by human error. Many more people would have had a chance to flee the inferno if the driver of the second subway train had stayed on the train and helped with emergency measures instead of running away and taking his keys with him. Large numbers of people would not have been killed in stampedes or died from smoke inhalation in the Chicago and Rhode Island nightclub fires if people had been able to open the emergency exits at both facilities.
Routine standard procedures may be monotonous, but they are key to the normal operation of security systems. The slightest lapse of attention to detail can contribute to a disaster as deadly as a terrorist attack. When the entire world is making an all-out effort to attack terrorist organizations, we should be making a concerted effort to prevent "unintentional acts of terror" such as the Alishan, Daegu and US tragedies. Building a working culture in which people abide by standard procedures is the simplest, cheapest anti-terror action -- and the most difficult to achieve.
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