Railway accident site cleared

The local railway operator in Hunan province has cleared and repaired the section of track where a passenger train derailed on Tuesday, killing one and injuring 127.

Over 1,000 workers were dispatched to speed up the replacement of the 380 meters of damaged rails, said China Railway Guangzhou Group, a branch of China State Railway Group.

It mobilized seven excavators and six railcars, as well as other rescue vehicles to accelerate the repair process, but the limited space posed challenges for the operation of rescue vehicles and lifting of the overturned carriages, the company said.

The repair work was finished at around 9 am on Tuesday, it said, adding that railway operations will gradually resume on the affected section of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway, one of the busiest rail routes in the country.

A total of 192 trains on the southbound section of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway, however, were still suspended or rerouted on Tuesday, according to the company.

The derailment happened in Yongxing county at 11:40 am on Monday when the train struck debris from a landslide that had fallen onto the track due to recent heavy rains, causing five carriages to derail and the power generation car to catch fire.

A railway police officer was killed and 122 passengers were hurt, four of them seriously. Five rail staff also sustained light injuries. All of the injured were sent to hospital, according to local authorities.

Eleven minutes before the incident, Li Haiping, a local villager who was playing with his granddaughter near the railway, claimed to have found the debris on the track and called the local police but failed to head off the tragedy, according to the Beijing News.

Li said he saw the track covered by a mass of rock and earth around 11 am. Without a phone on hand, he ran back home and called local police at 11:29.

He then returned to the site and made another phone call to the police. When he saw the train approaching, he also waved in a bid to get the driver's attention to stop.

A police officer surnamed Guo from the public security bureau of Youshi township, Yongxing county, told Beijing News that they did receive a phone call about the landslide and reported it to a higher-level authority immediately.

An anonymous employee from the China Railway Guangzhou Group said the train wasn't able to get the feedback from the local police that quickly since the time between the phone call and derailment was extremely short, according to Global Times.

China's meteorological authorities said on Tuesday that Yongxing county, where the incident took place, is expected to undergo continuous rainy weather in the coming days, with middle and heavy rain forecast between April 2 and 4, and precautions should be taken against geological disasters.