Commuter train derails in western Japan and hits apartment building

AMAGASAKI, Japan -- A packed commuter train that was behind schedule and may have been speeding jumped the tracks Monday and hurtled into an apartment complex, killing 57 people and injuring 440 in Japan's worst rail accident in 40 years.

Investigators focused on whether excessive speed or the actions of the inexperienced, 23-year-old driver caused the crash in an urban area near Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo. The driver overshot the last station before the wreck, and a crew member and several passengers speculated the train was speeding to make up time.

Floodlights were trained on one of the worst-damaged cars as rescuers tried to free at least three people still alive in the wreckage more than 11 hours after the 9:18 a.m. crash, said Yoshiki Nishiyama of the Amagasaki fire department.

The fate of the driver was unknown.

The seven-car commuter train was carrying 580 passengers when it derailed, wrecking an auto in its path before slamming into the parking garage of a nine-story apartment building. Two of the five derailed cars were flattened against the building, and hundreds of rescuers and police swarmed the wreckage and tended to the injured.

"There was a violent shaking, and the next moment I was thrown to the floor ... and I landed on top of a pile of other people," passenger Tatsuya Akashi told NHK. "I didn't know what happened, and there were many people bleeding."

Photos taken by an NHK reporter aboard the train showed passengers piled on the floor and some clawing to escape.

Police official Hiroshi Yamatani said the death toll had hit 57, with at least 440 people taken to hospitals, including 137 with broken bones and other serious injuries.

It was not clear how many of the dead were passengers or if bystanders and apartment residents were among the victims.

The accident was the worst rail disaster in nearly 42 years in safety-conscious Japan, home to one of the world's most complex, efficient and heavily traveled rail networks. A three-train crash in November 1963 killed 161 people in Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.

Distraught relatives rushed to hospitals Monday to search lists of the injured and dead. Takamichi Hayashi said his older brother, 19-year-old Hiroki, had called their mother on a cell phone from one of the cars just after the crash but remained unaccounted for. He had heard Hiroki was among the four whom rescuers were trying to free.

Investigators were trying to determine the cause of the crash.

Tsunemi Murakami, safety director for train operator West Japan Railway Co., estimated that the train would have had to be going 82 mph to have jumped the track purely because of excessive speed, and the crash happened at a curve that required the driver to slow to 43 mph.

Murakami said it still was not certain how fast the train was going. A crew member aboard told police later he "felt the train was going faster than usual," NHK said, echoing comments from survivors interviewed by the network that the driver seemed to be trying to make up for lost time after overshooting the previous station by 25 feet and having to back up.

The train was nearly 2 minutes behind schedule, media reports said.

Investigators also found evidence of rocks on the tracks, but hadn't determined whether that contributed to the crash, he said.

Experts suspected a confluence of factors was to blame.

"There are very few train accidents in Japan in which a train has flipped just because it was going too fast. There might have been several conditions at work -- speed, winds, poor train maintenance or aging rails," Kazuhiko Nagase, a Kanazawa Institute of Technology professor and train expert, told NHK.

NHK also reported that the automatic braking system on that stretch of track is among the oldest in Japan. The system stops trains at signs of trouble without requiring drivers to take emergency action, but the older system cannot halt trains traveling at high speeds, NHK said.

The driver -- identified as Ryujiro Takami -- had obtained his operator's license in May 2004. One month later, he had overshot a station and was issued a warning, railway officials and police said.

"There are many theories but we don't know for sure what caused the accident," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. "The prime minister instructed us to respond with urgency."

The president of West Japan Railway apologized.

"Our most important task now is to rescue the passengers from the accident and we are doing our best," Takeshi Kakiuchi said.

Soldiers were sent to the scene to assist. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered condolences to families of the dead and pledged that officials would do everything they could to prevent a recurrence.

Monday's derailment was the nation's deadliest train disaster since March 2000, when a Tokyo subway hit a derailed train, killing five. An accident killed 42 people in April 1991 in Shigaraki, western Japan.

Copyright C 2005 Deseret News Publishing Co.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.