At Least 70 Killed in Train Derailment in China

By ANITA CHANG

By Anita Chang

The Associated Press

ZIBO, China

Some passengers were sleeping, but others were standing in the aisle waiting to get off when their high-speed train derailed, toppling into a ditch “like a roller coaster” and slamming into another train. At least 70 people died and more than 400 were injured.

China reacted swiftly to its worst train accident in a decade, sending top officials and about 1,000 soldiers to Zibo, the site of Monday’s pre-dawn crash in eastern China’s Shandong province, and sacking two railway officials.

Authorities were quoted as saying that human error was to blame. The official Xinhua News Agency also said one of the trains was traveling too fast.

The crash occurred when a train headed from Beijing to the coastal city of Qingdao – site of the sailing competition during the Olympics in August – derailed and hit a second passenger train just before dawn. Nine of the first train’s carriages were knocked into a dirt ditch, Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said in a statement.

News photos showed rescuers pulling passengers from a rail car sitting on its side. Survivors bundled in white bed sheets from the sleeper cars stood or sat near the wreckage. The death toll could rise, with 70 people hospitalized in critical condition, according to Xinhua.

No foreigners were among the dead. Injured survivors included four French nationals, a coach from China’s national sailing team and a 3-year-old boy.

The second train, which had been headed from Yantai in Shandong to Xuzhou in eastern Jiangsu province, was knocked off its tracks but stayed upright.

“Most passengers were still asleep,” one passenger surnamed Zhang told Xinhua. “I suddenly felt the train, like a roller coaster, topple … to one side and all the way to the other side. When it finally went off the tracks, many people fell on me,” Zhang said.

Zhang, who was on the train from Beijing, was injured when the train fell into farmland beside the track.

human error

Authorities said human error was to blame. The Xinhua News Agency said one of the trains was traveling too fast.

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