Taiwan train crash: ‘Can you let me hug her again?’
From a father cradling the motionless body of his six-year-old daughter, to a woman who lost her entire family, Taiwanese media has been dominated by the heartbreaking stories of survivors of Friday’s train crash.
At least 50 people died and more than 200 were injured when the Taroko Express 408 carrying nearly 500 passengers crashed and derailed after hitting a construction vehicle that had fallen onto the tracks.
As funeral services and mourning ceremonies take place in the country, some survivors and rescuers have shared their experiences of the island’s worst rail disaster in decades.
‘We were not even meant to be on that train’
Chung Hui-mei’s family wasn’t meant to be on the train on Friday.
They had booked tickets for an earlier train that day – but had missed it. So they got standing tickets for the Taroko Express 408 – all the seats had been sold out already.
The family of four had been eager to get to the town of Hualien to mark the Tomb Sweeping Festival – a traditional Chinese festival when people pay their respects to the dead.
Ms Chung recalls that as the train neared their station, she heard the train conductor sound the horn. It meant he had “known that there was a situation ahead… but he didn’t slow down the train,” she later told reporters.
Seconds later – exactly 6.9 according to an investigation – the train slammed into a lorry that had slipped onto the tracks. Investigators said the train was only 250m (820ft) away from the lorry when it slid down, and that the driver – who died in the crash – would not have had time to react.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Ms Chung crawled around the carriage, frantically searching for her husband and 22-year-old son under a pile of debris and suitcases. She found them – but neither was breathing.
As she called out desperately for her daughter, she suddenly heard the 20-year-old girl respond weakly from under a tangled mass of metal parts: “I’m here.”
Ms Chung struggled to move the debris, but stopped when she heard another person speak up from underneath the rubble: “Auntie, please can you stop doing that? It’s hurting me.”
Soon after, her daughter stopped responding and fell silent.