The train, traveling to Taitung, came off the rails in a tunnel just north of Hualien causing some carriages to hit the wall of the tunnel, the fire department said in a statement.
At least four people are believed dead, three people with serious injuries have been sent to hospital and around 20 with light injuries are waiting to go to hospital, it said.
The train was carrying around 350 people, and rescue efforts are ongoing, the department said.
Between 80 to 100 people have been evacuated from the first four carriages of the train, while carriages five to eight have “deformed” and are hard to gain access to, it added.
“Is everyone out in carriage four?” a woman is heard shouting from inside the tunnel, in images provided by the fire department.
The official Central News Agency said a truck that was “not parked properly” was suspected of sliding into the path of the train. The fire department showed a picture of what appeared to be the truck’s wreckage lying next to part of the derailed train.
Images of the crash scene show carriages inside the tunnel crumbled and ripped apart from the impact, passengers gathering suitcases and bags in a tilted, derailed carriage and others walking along the tracks littered with wreckage.
The accident occurred at the start of a long weekend for the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day hospital.
Taiwan’s mountainous east coast is a popular tourist destination.
In 2018, 18 people died and 175 were injured when a train derailed in northeastern Taiwan, in the island’s worst rail disaster in more than three decades.
Members of the Utah Jazz feared for their lives after the team’s charter plane collided with a flock of birds shortly after takeoff Tuesday, causing an engine fire and failure and forcing an emergency landing.
“For a good 10 or 15 minutes, I think all of us on that flight were questioning if we were going to be here today,” Jazz point guard Mike Conley said after Wednesday night’s 111-107 road win over the Memphis Grizzlies. “That’s how serious it was for us. I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that guys were trying to text family just in case, you know? It was that kind of situation.”
Jazz star Donovan Mitchell missed Wednesday’s game due to what the team termed “personal reasons.” Mitchell, who has discussed a fear of flying in the past, did not join the team on its flight from Salt Lake City, to Memphis that took off hours after the emergency landing.
“It got to that point where we were all on the plane like, ‘This might be really the end,'” Jazz sixth man Jordan Clarkson said. “I mean, it was a crazy situation. I understand fully why Don didn’t come.”
Mitchell playfully tweeted support of his teammates throughout the win over the Grizzlies.
During his pregame media availability, Utah coach Quin Snyder declined to answer a question about whether Tuesday’s frightening incident could impact Mitchell’s availability for future road games. The Jazz, who have a home back-to-back this weekend, are next scheduled to play on the road Monday in Dallas.
Snyder said the Jazz met Wednesday morning in Memphis to help each other process the terrifying experience.
“I don’t know that an experience like that is just suddenly passed on and away,” Snyder said. “Everybody’s impacted in different ways, all very significant. And it wasn’t something that we were going to solve by just talking through everything, but I think it was important to acknowledge what we all went through [Tuesday], and, really, that same feeling of gratitude and appreciation for the fragility that we all live with, sometimes without being aware of it.”
Conley said it felt like there was an explosion on the plane, a Delta charter. He said the plane immediately started to bounce and tilt left, and people in the back saw flames as altitude dropped on the flight.
“Nobody knows. Everybody’s just quiet,” said Conley, who had 26 points and seven assists in the win over the Grizzlies. “It took the pilots probably five to 10 minutes, probably about 10 minutes, to go through everything, go through their checks and get back to us and let us know what was going on. Because it was obvious that something was really wrong with the plane.
“It felt like the plane was breaking apart in midair. For five or 10 minutes, it felt like complete helplessness. We’re thankful it wasn’t as serious as it could have been, but it was scary.”
Snyder, Clarkson and Conley each praised the pilots for their calm, professionalism and expertise in executing the emergency landing.
“It’s definitely something, an experience, that we’re happy to be able to tell,” Clarkson said. “A lot of us really came to a point … at least 30 seconds in that flight, everybody came to the point where it was like, ‘Man, it might be over for us.’ It’s sad to say that. I don’t play with death or anything like that.
“It’s just something that we’ve got to push through and come together and keep going, stay strong, support each other. How much time we’ve got to take off, or talking to our mental health people or whatever it is, that’s a serious situation if you’ve never been faced with life and death.”
When Papua New Guinea recorded its first Covid case in March 2020, the country held its breath.
There were acute fears about the impact of Covid on the country’s already overwhelmed and under-resourced health system, which has roughly 500 doctors to serve a population of around nine million, and was already struggling to deal with outbreaks of measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio.
But for a long time, the Covid crisis did not take hold in PNG.
Now, a year later, as vaccines allow many countries to hope for the end of the pandemic, the catastrophe experts predicted has finally arrived in Papua New Guinea.
“This is what we all feared last year when the pandemic started,” sayid Dr William Pomat, director of the Papua New Medical Research Institute.
In the last month, the number of confirmed cases in Papua New Guinea has skyrocketed, increasing from fewer than 900 cases and nine deaths at the beginning of February, to more than 3,000 confirmed cases and 36 deaths in mid-March.
“We are seeing more people getting very sick from Covid-19 this year compared to previous waves,” Matt Cannon, St John’s Commissioner.
Authorities fear that the scale of the outbreak has been masked by low testing rates – with just 55,000 tests conducted in the entire country throughout the pandemic – and that the true number of infections might be many times higher.
St John’s Ambulance conduct drive-through Covid testing at the Taurama Aquatic Centre in Port Morseby. Photograph: Kalolaine Fainu/The Guardian
‘Fragile health system’
Writing in the Guardian earlier this week, Glen Mola, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Port Moresby General Hospital, in the country’s capital, warned that 30% of the staff at the maternity ward had tested positive to Covid and voiced his fears that they would not be able to keep the hospital’s doors open and women “may end up dying in the hospital car park”.
“We have a very fragile health system and the stress is already being felt. We may very soon collapse if we are not careful … It is a ticking timebomb,” said Dr Sam Yockopua, director of emergency medicine in Port Moresby.
Stigma around the virus is still rife in the Pacific country and many refuse to go for testing even when showing symptoms. Masks are only worn to enter buildings, but outside in the bustling city people still walk around without masks as conspiracy theories and claims of immunity grow.
Out in the public market in Port Moresby, people complain about having to wear masks, saying that Covid-19 cannot harm Papua New Guineans because of their skin tone, a myth that emerged early in the pandemic as an explanation for PNG’s low infection rates.
St John’s Ambulance has set up drive through covid testing in Port Morseby. Photograph: Kalolaine Fainu/The Guardian
‘Covid-19 won’t affect us’
As Julie Osafa, 53, boards an overcrowded bus from Port Moresby to Boroko, she dismissed fears about the spread of Covid-19.
“PNG we are a Christian country, Covid-19 won’t affect us. They’re just lying to us,” she said.
Her friend Anna John, 46, added that the Covid-19 vaccine was the end of times and the vaccination would mark Papua New Guineans with the sign of the devil.
“They made Covid-19 so they can vaccinate us and put the mark of the beast, Satan, on us,” she said.
Even the family of an 86-year-old man suspected to have died from Covid-19 has called the virus a “government conspiracy”.
Australia has scrambled to provide its nearest neighbour with aid, promising to deliver 8,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and asking the European Union to divert one million doses of the vaccine bound for Australia to PNG instead. But many in Papua New Guinea still do not want to be vaccinated and are against the “national isolation” lockdown that will begin next week. Schools will close and travel will be banned.
Such beliefs and conspiracy theories have prompted the country’s prime minister, James Marape, and other members of parliament to come forward saying that they will be the first ones to be vaccinated, offering earlier this week to be the “guinea pig” for the vaccine.
“For those who think Covid-19 is a joke, or are playing around; this is a global established pandemic,’’ he warned.