A fatal train crash yesterday in London, the third in Britain in 11 years, has reawakened controversy about the country's ageing rail network and its declining safety standards since the privatization of British Rail.
Two packed commuter trains collided near London's Paddington Station during the height of the morning rush hour yesterday, killing at least eight people and injuring about 160.
Several cars derailed and at least one burst into flames in the residential Ladbroke Grove area of west London.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"It is a tangled and difficult scene," Deputy Police Commissioner Andy Trotter said.
Authorities said 128 people had been taken to hospitals, 21 of them with severe injuries.
Nearly six hours after the 8:11am crash, the last three surviving trapped passengers were freed, police said.
"We believe there are a number of bodies still trapped in the wreckage, but it is impossible to gauge the number of those on board," Tony Thompson of the British Transport Police said.
"The scene is one of twisted metal and burned-out carriages, which makes the search a long and careful process," he said. "But we are satisfied there are no live casualties left inside."
The collision, involving the two mainline trains, occurred about three kilometers west of Paddington station, less than a kilometer north of Notting Hill.
A spokesman for First Great Western Trains said the accident involved its high-speed service from Cheltenham, in western England, and a Thames Trains service outbound to Bedwyn, Wiltshire, west of London.
The accident happened on the same stretch of line as the Southall rail crash in September 1997 in which seven people died and 150 were injured. Great Western was fined ?1.5 million (US$2.47 mill-ion) after an investigation of the Southall crash.
"In our opinion, if you look at what happened today, it appears that there are troubling similarities with Southall," Des Collins, a lawyer representing the families of train disaster victims, said.
"There is clearly a problem with the privatized network, which must be looked into urgently," he added.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced a public inquiry into yesterday's crash after visiting the scene.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS