Four dead, 33 injured in Yamagata train derailment

[ichigo partygirl]

[Charles]

Mainichi has a pic of the accident online, wow, this scene does not match the engineers story at all. How could a 72kph/45mph wind "float" cars that far off the tracks? How fast was the train moving when it derailed? Damn, it's a miracle that innocent bystanders didn't get killed when the rail car hit the building.

Edit: now Mainichi has a photo special up with about 30 pics.

[GomiGirl]

Made the news in Australia!!!

[Greji]

Made the news in Australia!!!

CNN radio (News that you can trust!)(that's their by-line, not mine) had it on in the US!

I did note that the Japanese media is playing up the police investigation into who was responsible and it looks like they are lining it up for another train driverto take the fall for out of date equipment, procedures, training, JR head-in-ass operations, etc.

(BTW, Gomi, hope you had a cool yule in your new digs!)

[ichigo partygirl]

[Charles]

...Rescuers resumed the search after authorities received information that two women and a girl have been missing since the accident...

That part of this story has really been bothering me. I saw the FujiTV news coverage that pointed out they have no idea how many people were on the train, so they have no idea if they have recovered all the bodies. Ever since then, I keep thinking a horrific thought, what if some pour soul got ejected from the train during the crash and was completely overlooked, lying there in a snowdrift, and they could have been saved if they had looked for them in time. Maybe they'll find the missing women in the spring when the snow melts.
Anyway, FujiTV's coverage really pissed me off. While rescue crews were still trying to evacuate the living and remove the dead, the their reporter went up the tracks to investigate the rumored cause of the crash, at the bridge where the train appeared to derail. The reporter showed wheel marks on the railroad ties where the wheels started to run off the tracks, then he shows some metal debris that had been stripped off the train, lying beside the rails. Then he PICKS UP the metal train parts, shows them to the camera, and sets them down in a different position than he found them. Now if some bonehead reporter had done that in the US, they would have been arrested for tampering with evidence in an investigation.

[ichigo partygirl]