Tragic Turn on Taiwan’s Tracks: A Roller‑Coaster Gone Wrong
On the afternoon of Sunday, October 21, the Puyuma Express No. 6432 went off the rails near Xinma Station in Yilan county. All eight cars slid off the track on a bend, and four of them flipped over like a teacup at a carnival.
Who Is Hurt When the Train Goes Hurl?
- Dead and Injured: 18 people lost their lives, and 187 were hurt. The total came to 366 passengers—all of them had been cleared from the wreckage by 9:35 pm.
- First‑Car Tragedy: Fifteen of the 18 fatalities were in the first three cars. Among them, a nine‑year‑old young passenger was the youngest victim.
- Local Losses: Two junior‑high students from Taitung (ages 12 and 13) were killed. A full family of eight was riding home from a wedding in Taipei, and a tour guide was aboard.
- Lucky Survives: One passenger named Khoo managed to break a safety window and shepherd three others out before the car flipped. He later said, “The world turned upside down in three seconds.”
Why Did the Train Carelessly Take a Curve?
Survivors and witnesses say the train was revving like a fist‑pump jazz drummer on a bend. The crew had stopped in a couple of spots, “but the train restarted as soon as we were through the trouble.”
“It was going very fast. I thought I could tell the train to slow down on a curve,” remarked a passenger named Henry Tseng. He was in one of the overturned cars, mentioned that he hit a wall when the car began flipping, and felt that “there’s no time to think about what happened.” He eventually suffered eye injuries.
One survivor even noted the train had a “shaky‑shaky” feeling throughout the ride and that it rode “very fast” before losing control.
The Rescue Operation
- Night‑Long Search: Hundreds of rescuers and military people swept the wreckage with spotlights, capping the frantic search with cranes that lifted the mangled cars—some arranged in a zigzag pattern along the track.
- Crane Chaos: “Check there, check there,” ran the rescuers, as they lifted deformed cars to find survivors.
- Overturned Ride: A seventh‑grader surnamed Yang recounted the scene: “It’s terrifying. I didn’t know how it happened. After a flash of terror, the train flipped, the seats crashed, and suitcases were scattered everywhere.”
- Top‑Of‑Car Search: Some rescuers climbed onto the upside‑down carriage that hit an electric pole.
Tracking the Big Picture
Railways Administration Deputy Chief Lu Chieh‑Shen told reporters that the train was in “pretty good condition.” Yet, the investigation is still alive, trying to pin the shock to the train’s speed, a possible platform design flaw at Xinma Station, or something else.
Foreign Fuel in the Mis‑firing
Yilan firefighters recorded a slightly injured American woman aboard and now ask whether more foreigners could have been on the train.
This headline drawn from The Straits Times demands attention: Taiwan’s deadliest rail disaster in more than three decades leaves a fateful reminder that the rails can be as perilous as a roller‑coaster on a broken track.
