More than 9,000 people traveling on Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) trains were delayed yesterday because of snapped electricity cables between Shuangsi (雙溪) and Santiago (三貂嶺) caused by trees sliding from the embankment along the tracks.
The incident came just one day after more than 6,000 travelers were delayed when a commuter train failed to following the signaling system and broke a railway switch.
The railway said that it received a damage report at 7:25am yesterday from the driver of the No. 204 express train heading from Shulin (樹林) in New Taipei City to Jhihben (知本) in Taitung County.
The driver reported that trees sliding from the embankment had caused 150m of the electric cables to fall off, and damaged five sets of triangular cantilever brackets and one counterweight.
The incident cut the power to the eastern railway line, forcing the railroad agency to use the west railway for two-way traffic.
The tree slide and broken cables were cleared about four hours later, the agency said.
Chen Shih-chi (陳仕其), head of the agency’s Construction Department, said that heavy rain in the Shuangsi-Santiago section over the weekend and strong wind yesterday morning, could have been contributing factors in the incident, causing the erosion that led to the tree slide.
The agency’s train safety committee is investigating the cause of the incident, Chen said.
TRA crews have been routinely been walking along the railway tracks on Mondays to check for abnormalities, and inspecting embankments once a month, he said.
Except on the South Railway Line and Yilan Line, which have been prone to landslides, the agency has rarely faced incidents like yesterday’s and the Shuangsi-Santiago section had not had trouble previously.
Agency statistics showed that 34 trains and about 9,300 passengers were affected by yesterday’s disruption.
Those traveling on the No. 204 express train were delayed for 80 minutes and are entitled to apply for a full refund of their tickets.
Meanwhile, the train safety committee’s investigation in Sunday’s incident determined that it had been caused by the negligence of the northbound commuter train (No. 3183) driver, who had not followed the signaling system.
The committee’s report said the driver stopped the train as soon as he realized he had hit a railway switch, and the following trains avoided collisions by obeying the signaling system.
The driver of the No. 3813 train, surnamed Wang (李), and Chiayi transport group chief, surnamed Wang (王), have been given major demerits and removed from their posts because of Sunday’s incident. Other supervisors were given warnings or minor demerits.
The southbound commuter train driver, who reported yesterday’s problem in time, was given a major merit.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not