HUALIEN, Taiwan – Two days after the deadliest railway disaster in Taiwan in decades, investigators worked Sunday to determine why a truck slipped from a construction site into a high-speed train, leading to the collision and derailment that left dozens of people dead. killed. .
The driver of the crane truck, Lee Yi-hsiang, was detained on Sunday by a judge, who overturned an earlier decision to grant him bail. Mr. Lee, who is not charged with a crime, told reporters he caused the crash and said he would take full responsibility for it.
“I hereby express my deep regret and my deepest apology,” Mr Lee said, choking his voice as he bowed in apology.
But investigators are still trying to determine if Mr. Lee the emergency brake failed, or that the truck was malfunctioning in some way. Mr. Lee told reporters on Saturday that he had engaged the brake.
Other aspects of the disaster are also being investigated. Officials said they wanted to determine exactly when the driver of the train braked before the collision.
Officials said on Sunday that 50 people had died in the crash of the Taroko Express with eight cars, which derailed and crashed into a tunnel wall after hitting the truck on Friday. The train was full, with 498 people on the first day of a long holiday weekend.
Authorities earlier set the death toll at 51st. The identification of victims was a slow and difficult process, and emergency personnel on Sunday were still trying to retrieve wreckage from the tunnel and repair the remains of victims. Thirty-seven survivors of the crash were still hospitalized Sunday, officials said.
Some survivors and relatives of the dead showed more grief than anger. It was found that the last serious train accident in Taiwan, in 2018, was caused by the negligence of the driver, but the first impression was that the collision on Friday was more like a freak accident.
Some family members said they did not want to take responsibility for the disaster until the government completed its investigation, which authorities say would take about two months.
“I do not want to blame anyone,” Wu Ming-yu, 68, said on Sunday as she sat with family members under a tent at a funeral home in Hualien, a city south of the accident on the east coast of Taiwan. They were waiting for a body bag makeup artist to present his body to me. Wu’s daughter, Huang Chiao-ling, a 35-year-old nurse who was on her way to see her family, was finishing off.
Me. Wu said she was concerned that the construction site may not have met safety standards. “You have to ensure the safety of the construction, because if you do not do that, you will end up hurting other people,” she said. Wu said.
The construction project was commissioned by the Taiwan Ministry of Transportation to improve the safety of the slope near the crash, which took place on a steep mountain slope on the Pacific coast. It was part of a larger six-year plan to improve railway safety in Taiwan. Mr. Lee, the manager of the crane, was also the site manager of the project.
“It’s ironic and very unfortunate,” said Yusin Lee, a professor of civil engineering and director of the Center for Railway Studies at Cheng Kung National University in the southern city of Tainan. “It’s a reminder that even if we have safety-oriented construction projects, we need to keep safety in mind.”
At a news conference Sunday, officials said Lee Yi-hsiang may have hidden part of his background when he applied to be the site’s site manager.
Su Chih-wu, an on-site quality control engineer, said by telephone that workers had almost completed the project, which was focused on strengthening the structure of a train tunnel running parallel to the one where the accident took place.
He also said there should be no workers on site on Friday as it was the first day of a long holiday weekend. It was not clear on Sunday whether Lee Yi-hsiang or anyone else was on the scene that day.
Another engineer of the project, Yang Chin-lang, rejected the idea that his team could not ensure an adequate level of safety. “I did nothing wrong,” he said by telephone. Both Yang and Su said they were questioned by prosecutors on Saturday.
“I just followed the design prints and did my job,” he said. Yang added.
The crash happened near Qingshui Cliff, an area where mountains rise dramatically from the Pacific Ocean. Experts believe that the difficult terrain has long posed a challenge for transportation engineers, and many accidents have occurred over the years on the winding highway there. But the railway and highway routes are an important link between Taipei, the capital and the east coast.
Feng Hui Sheng, deputy director of the Taiwan Railways Administration, said in an interview on Sunday that the agency has been continuously making safety improvements to its systems and equipment since the 2018 accident.
He said these changes would continue and that the authorities also wanted to improve the network’s signaling and alarm systems and improve rail safety. But he also acknowledged that broader changes could take place slowly.
“As for the innovation and reform of the system, he is more conservative,” he added.
Joy Dong from Hong Kong reported.