Failure to thoroughly follow standard procedures in the maintenance of railway tracks was identified as the main cause of a derailment of a train in Hualien on Wednesday afternoon, the Taiwan Railways Administration said yesterday.
The derailment of the Tzuchiang-class express train saw two passengers sustain minor injuries, while more than 6,000 passengers were affected by the incident, with the TRA not resuming normal operations until 10:37am yesterday.
It was the second derailment on the line connecting Hualien and Taitung this month after a June 4 incident, which was blamed on high temperatures warping tracks.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
A preliminary investigation of Wednesday’s derailment showed that engineers were to inspect tracks near a railway crossing the day before the incident, based on summertime railway maintenance rules.
A detailed report is to be released in 10 days, the agency said.
The engineers should have issued warnings after completing their maintenance work, it said.
The incident was a result of workers not thoroughly carrying out maintenance of the tracks near the crossing, it said.
Punishments have been meted out to six people responsible for the incident, the agency added.
TRA director-general Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said that maintaining tracks at or near crossings is important, because the tracks there are affected by constant use by motor vehicles.
Maintenance workers also have to ascertain that electric cables and tracks are in proper condition and pose no threat to safety, Chou said.
Maintenance personnel need to be aware of changes to railway infrastructure with daily or monthly inspections to prevent railway incidents, he said.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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