HUALIEN, Taiwan – While crawling through the smoky wreckage, she first found her husband and son trapped under luggage compartments and broken steel, but they were not breathing. Then she called her daughter’s name. A dull voice replies, ‘I’m here. ‘
Following the vote, Hana Kacaw found her daughter among a mass of metal train parts. She tried to pull pieces off the wreck, but to no avail. “Please hold on,” she urged. “Someone is coming to save us.”
“I can no longer go on,” her daughter said. Kacaw replied. Those were her last words.
Similarly, me. Kacaw lost her husband of more than 20 years and their 21-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter, both promising athletes at university. They were among the 51 people killed Friday when a train derailed off the east coast of Taiwan in the worst disaster of the island in four decades. Others who died were the two drivers of the train, at least two young children, as well as a French citizen and an American.
The eight-car Taroko Express train was nearly full, with about 490 passengers – 120 or so who had tickets alone – on the first day of a long holiday weekend in Taiwan. According to authorities, the train, which was traveling to the eastern city of Taitung, probably collided with a construction vehicle that rolled down a slope and then crashed into a tunnel.
Authorities, which are investigating thoroughly, said on Saturday a suspect was questioned and subsequently released on bail. The government also said their families could compensate about $ 190,000 for each deceased, although that would later finalize that amount.
Rescuers rescued all the people they suspected survived, and they used excavators to try to pull out the train carriages. The victims were the largest in several train carriages – numbered 5 to 8 – that got stuck deep in the tunnel. Me. Kacaw, who was in car 8 in front of the train, finally came out of the tunnel alone.
After spending a sleepless night in a hotel, she joined dozens of other grieving family members on Saturday in the cruel, painful task of identifying remnants and saying goodbye.
They gathered at a temporary support center set up under tents outside a funeral home in Hualien, a city south of the crash. They in turn entered a mortuary where corpses were kept, and many shook and came up in agitation. Some discussed funeral arrangements and examined autopsy reports, while volunteers, Christian pastors, and Buddhist monks — and even President Tsai Ing-wen, briefly offered comfort.
For some families, grief is complicated by uncertainty. Some family members were frustrated because they could not identify their loved ones, but officials said they hoped DNA samples would help. The impact of the accident was so great and the destruction so severe, officials explained that rescue workers in several train carriages could only extract human remains in parts.
Inside these train carriages hangs the pungent smell of blood in the air, Zeng Wen-Long, a Red Cross volunteer rescue worker, said in an interview. It was there, also in car 8, that the team of mr. Zeng found 5-year-old Yang Chi-chen, who was traveling with her older sister and father, under a chair.
More than an hour had passed before the team reached her Friday, and she was already very weak. Mr. Zeng said he carried her to her father, Max Yang, who leaned against the tunnel and called to the rescuers and asked to hold the motionless child.
Mr. Yang, 42, said he tried to call her to wake her up. A few times, he said, her eyes would flutter open before closing again. “I’m sorry,” Mr. Yang told her.
By the time they got to a hospital, Yang said Chi-chen had died. She was one of the youngest victims. Her 9-year-old sister remains in intensive care.
On Saturday, Mr. Yang returns to the scene of the accident – a tunnel running through green mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean – with other grieving family members to ‘recall the soul’, a traditional Taoist rouritual usually used for victims of an accident performed.
Opposite the calm blue waters, the family members called their loved ones who had died in the accident.
“Come home!” they shouted to the tunnel, where workers in yellow hard hats stopped work to repair the damaged train track and remove the train carriages. “It’s time to go now!”
Mr. Yang said Chi-Chen, a tumultuous girl, was excited to spend the long holiday weekend in an ocean-themed amusement park in Hualien, famous for its dolphin show.
“Yang Chi-chen, stop playing in the water now, we’re leaving!” the mr. Yang, who still had a catheter in his hand, and cried bandages on his bruised cheek. “We’re going to take the bus to have fun somewhere else!”
On a lookout platform above the other families, Ms. Kacaw, the woman who lost her husband and two children, wept silently while a Christian pastor led a prayer.
Both her son, Kacaw, and her daughter, Micing, were students and track stars at National Taiwan Sports University in Taoyuan, a city near Taipei. They were a close-knit family and maintained a deep bond with their indigenous ethnic group, the Amis.
Me. Kacaw said she enjoyed playing badminton with her daughter in their New Taipei neighborhood and playing guitar after her son. She said the children were introverted, as was their father, Siki Takiyo, whom she described as a gentle university administrator.
Now, all three of them were gone, and me. Kacaw’s grief was exacerbated by feelings of guilt as she struggled to understand how they could have died while surviving.
She said she could not stop thinking about how she asked her children to go back to their ancestral home in eastern Taiwan. She wanted them to see their grandparents and pay their respects to their ancestors’ graves. The children agreed, although her daughter had a job meeting and prepared her son for exams.
On Friday morning, the family missed the train they had originally booked. A friendly ticket seller on the platform offered to upgrade them to the Taroko Express, which would get them there faster. In the train, she sat in the back of the first car, while her husband and children were in front – the part of the train that would later have the greatest impact.
For me. Kacaw the unbearable randomness of everything was unbearable.
“Why did I not go with them?” she asked in tears. “Why did I ask my children to come home with me?”
After the prayer, she sat in a wheelchair, dazed, with a large cotton bandage over her forehead. Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the sea. A light rain began to fall.
“My only wish is for them to come into my dreams tonight,” she said.
Joy Dong from Hong Kong reported.