菲律賓首都大馬尼拉地區帕賽市13日下午發生城鐵列車脫軌事故，造成至少38人受傷。
帕賽市警方負責人表示，列車脫軌事故發生在當地時間13日下午3時，目前尚無人員死亡。38名傷者已被送入附近醫院治療，其中大部分是婦女和老人。
新華社消息，交通部長阿瓦亞表示，事故發生前，一輛滿載乘客的城鐵列車因為沒有電停在了麥哲倫車站與塔夫脫車站之間，等待另一輛列車推動。在兩輛列車連接過程中，後一輛列車突然失控，導致事故發生。
(UPDATE 8 – 8:12 p.m.) MANILA – The government had to temporarily suspend the operations of MRT3 on Wednesday after one of its trains derailed at Taft Avenue.
MRT Spokesman Hernando Cabrera explained initially that a south-bound train encountered a technical problem just after leaving Magallanes bound for Taft Avenue Station.
A succeeding train unloaded all its passengers in order to push the disabled train onward to Taft Station, which is at street level.
Cabrera related that, after the two trains had been coupled and the push operation got underway, at some point, the disabled train being pushed became uncoupled and, being already de-energized and, thus, having no operating brakes, became a “runaway” — rolling toward Taft station, ultimately ramming the terminal barrier and crashing beyond the wall of the station and coming to a stop just outside the station building.
Several persons who were injured were brought to nearby San Juan de Dios Medical Center in Baclaran. At least 20 were being treated at Pasay City General Hospital, and three suffered leg fractures.
A source familiar with train operations shares a prevalently followed protocol in cases similar to this afternoon’s mishap: Operator’s manuals typically call for the passengers in a disabled train to be moved to the working wagon.
Apparently, for reasons still to be discerned, the disabled train was not unloaded. Instead, the working MRT wagon was made to push the passenger-laden (disabled and de-energized) train toward Taft and, when it came time to slow down as they approached the destination, the momentum of the heavy wagon being pushed — momentum being a function of an object’s mass and its velocity — apparently overcame the material strength of the coupling and caused it to break free of the link, as the pushing wagon was by this time trying to pull against it to reduce speed.
In other words, the coupling may have snapped at this point because of the excessive strain between the two wagons: one trying to decelerate the other by pulling against it.
And the first wagon, with no operative brake because it had been de-energized, simply rolled on until it crashed into the barrier at the end of the track.
Hernando Cabrera, spokesperson of MRT3, said that the agency is now investigating the incident, which caused train service to be halted for about an hour.
By 6:03 p.m., MRT sources reported that limited service had been restored, but only up to Magallanes station, with so-called “single track” service to Taft Station as technicians attend to the problem at Taft.
“We will give out constant advisories on the state of our operation,” Cabrera said.
For his part, Michael Arthur Sagcal, DOTC spokesperson, explained that, the stalled train, following railway standard operating procedure (SOP), had to be pushed by the next oncoming train.
“The two trains were coupled or linked together, but along the way, the coupling disconnected. This caused the derailed train to go past the Taft platform,” Sagcal said.
He said that DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya has instructed MRT-3 to assist the injured passengers right away while he inspects the site and gets a full report on the incident based on information gleaned from its “black box” data recorder.
“We are currently undergoing necessary intervention for the technical problem encountered. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the DOTC-MRT3 said in its tweet.
MRT3, which runs from North Avenue in Quezon City to Taft Avenue in Pasay City, serves nearly 500,000 passengers per day, or way beyond its rated capacity of about 350,000.
The rail system has a fleet of 73 Czech-made rail cars, of which up to 60 three-car trains operate daily.
The trains run at a maximum speed of 65 kilometers per hour to cover the rail system’s 13 stations in about 30 minutes, including short dwell times of about 25-35 seconds in each station.
Cabrera said that an investigation was immediately launched to find out the cause of the accident, specifically what could have led to the unintended uncoupling of the two trains.
Meanwhile, LTFRB Chairman Winston Ginez said that he will ask city bus operators to ferry stranded MRT passengers.
Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said that DOTC Secretary Abaya went straight for the accident site, coming from Malacanang.
Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma said: “We need to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of our commuters, including identifying the reason why the coach overshot the train rail.”