Death tolls are rising in unrelated but equally-tragic incidents recently. A bus crash in China, a head-on collision of two trains in California, and a plane in Russia have shocked the world.
Human error is blamed for at least 25 deaths in California’s worst-ever train wreck on September 13. The engineer, who died in the crash, apparently ran a stop signal before the passenger train he was driving slammed into a freight train. It’s rumoured that he sent a text message to a friend just before the incident happened.
The death toll could rise as many of the 135 people injured were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Survivors were being pulled from the twisted wreckage hours after the devastating crash, with firemen and police working long hours through the night to free the passengers. It’s estimated that the trains were travelling at about 40 miles per hour when they slammed together, with the force of the impact driving the passenger train’s engine backward into a passenger car.
Meanwhile, in China, no survivors were found following a bus crash on September 12 in the mountains of Sichuan province. The bus with its 51 passengers left the road and fell 300 feet into a gorge, where it exploded. The bus was headed to Bazhong to Ningbo, a coastal city south of Shanghai. Bus travel is an inexpensive and popular mode of transportation in China. The incident follows a bus crash last month in the country’s northwest which resulted in the deaths of at least 25 students heading for medical exams prior to beginning high school.
And in Russia, a passenger jet , a passenger jet crashed on September 14 on the outskirts of the city of Perm, killing all 88 passengers and crew on board. It was enroute from Moscow to the mountain city, a distance of about 1200 kilometres. Engine failure has been cited as a possible cause. Engine parts, papers, clothing and sections of the fuselage were scattered in the area, causing a rail line to be shut down until the debris was cleared.
The flight carried six crew members and 82 passengers, some of whom were from the USA, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany and other countries. Fortunately, the plane crashed on the outskirts of Perm in an unpopulated area following a flight in difficult weather conditions. It had circled the airport at the height of 1000 metres waiting for improvement, but lost contact with the ground crew and crashed.
Globally, air travel was sharply curtailed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and only returned to its pre-9/11 levels recently. With stricter security in place, confidence of passengers has been restored and flying has become an accepted method of travel once again. There is so far no indication of a security breach in the Russian air incident but the cause is still being investigated.
