April 27, 2005
By Issei Kato
Reuters
Wired News
AMAGASAKI, Japan - The death toll in Japan's worst rail accident in four decades looked set to top 100 Wednesday as hopes of finding more survivors in the wreckage faded along with the light of the third day of rescue efforts.
As darkness fell, the official death toll stood at 94 and there was little hope for the 20 or so people still believed to be trapped inside the front carriage of the train, embedded in the ground-floor car park of an apartment building.
No survivors have been found since early Tuesday when three people were extracted from the twisted mass of metal.
"The front carriage has been crushed to a fraction of its normal length, so we are continuing this work with very little hope," said a fire department official.
Rescue teams used ultrasound equipment to check for heart beats in the crumpled carriage, but there was no sign of life.
Black-clad mourners sobbed at funerals of relatives and friends while anxious families of the missing waited for news at a gymnasium that had been used as a makeshift morgue.
"I would like to apologize for this. My heart aches," Shojiro Nanya, chairman of train operator West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) told reporters Wednesday.
"I would really like to apologize for this accident."
Nanya is one of three company executives expected to resign to take responsibility for the disaster.
Police raided JR West's offices Tuesday looking for clues on the cause of the crash, which occurred as the packed commuter train rounded a tight curve just after the morning rush hour.
Investigators have said one cause could have been excessive speed after the train's driver fell more than a minute behind schedule -- a significant delay in a country where commuters have grown to rely on train timetables almost to the second.
The government, keen to avoid any erosion of confidence in a rail system that transports more than 21 billion people a year, pledged to ensure the safety of the country's railways.
"The government as one, will do its utmost to find out the cause of the accident and prevent a recurrence," Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa told parliament.
Even as he spoke, news emerged that a commuter train in Yokohama, near Tokyo, had collided with a van at a crossing.
None of the train's passengers was hurt, but the van's driver was taken to hospital with serious injuries.
Tuesday, another passenger train hit a truck at another crossing near Tokyo. The truck driver suffered minor injuries.
FACTORS
Investigations into Monday's crash were focusing on speed as well as other factors such as rail design that might have caused the packed train to jump the tracks.
Data recorded in the train's system showed it was traveling at 100 km (62 miles) an hour as it approached the site of the accident, where the speed limit was 70 km per hour. But analysts said speed alone would not likely have led to the disaster.
JR West, which was completely privatized a year ago, has been trying to improve profitability by cutting costs, leading to speculation it may have cut corners on safety.
"Efficiency is necessary, but safety cannot be sacrificed in return for efficiency," Kitagawa said.
The automatic train stop system in the area was of the oldest type and had no ability to apply automatic brakes if a passing train was going too fast, the Transport Ministry said.
Analysts said the accident could have been caused by a number of factors, alone or in combination, such as malfunctioning brakes, faulty rails or driver error.
JR West has said there were marks on the tracks of the type left when a train runs over an object such as a stone, but added that it was not clear if this was related to the accident.
The train had overshot the previous station by about 130 feet and had to reverse back to the platform.
The driver, a 23-year-old man with 11 months' experience, is presumed to have died in the crash.
The same driver also over-shot a station by 328 feet last June, railway officials said.
The accident was the worst for Japan's heavily used rail network since 1963 when about 160 people were killed in a multiple train collision, and the most serious since Japan's rail network was privatized in 1987.
JR West shares rose 0.76 percent Wednesday after falling a total of about 5 percent Monday and Tuesday.
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