More than 200 belongings of passengers who were killed in the derailments of Puyuma Express 6432 in Yilan in 2018 and Taroko Express 408 in Hualien in 2021 are now available for family members to retrieve following conclusions of investigations into the incidents, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said in a statement yesterday.
The agency’s handling of remains and belongings came under scrutiny, after family members of victims who had died in the Taroko Express derailment found skull fragments when returning to the site of the accident.
The Executive Yuan on Sept. 6 convened a meeting to review results of the investigations into the two accidents and procedures that were followed to preserve train carriages.
Photo courtesy of the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office via CNA
Following the Cabinet-level meeting, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board and prosecutors were instructed by the Executive Yuan to work together and list items that are to be returned to the TRA along with the train carriages, the railway agency said.
Once the train carriages were returned, the TRA is responsible for inviting family members, the board, third-party experts, prosecutors and police to oversee the cleaning process, the agency said, adding that the carriages should be preserved for future use in railway safety education.
“We have found 35 remaining items in the Puyuma Express carriages, and 170 in the Taroko Express carriages. These items have been announced to the public and are waiting to be reclaimed by family members,” the agency said.
“As the human remains were suspected to be those of victims, they are to be examined first by the Institute of Forensic Medicine under the Ministry of Justice’s instruction. Once the remains are determined to be those of the victims, prosecutors would inform family members, and we would assist family members in making funeral arrangements,” it added.
Cleaning of train carriages in both accidents was completed in three stages, the agency said.
During the first stage, prosecutors from the Taoyuan and Keelung prosecutors’ offices on Sept. 1, Sept. 4 and Sept. 5 began inspecting carriages of the Taroko Express that were stored at the TRA’s Fugang operational base in Taoyuan and train depot in Keelung’s Cidu District (七堵).
During the second stage, the Yilan Prosecutors’ Office on Sept. 11 completed inspection of carriages of the Puyuma Express that were stored in the Fugang base. On Sept. 12, the Taoyuan and Keelung prosecutors’ offices completed inspections of the Taroko Express carriages.
During the final stage, the cleaning of the Puyuma Express carriages was completed on Friday last week, overseen by family members of the victims, the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office, the board, the Railway Police Bureau and the National Fire Agency.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS