简体中文
Fighting back tears, bereaved families of 24 mainland tourists killed in a bus fire arrived in Taiwan via a charter flight from the northeast mainland city of Dalian on Thursday to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.
The relatives were accompanied by Taiwan tourism and immigration officials to a facility to collect DNA samples so the victims could be identified.
They declined to speak to reporters before being taken to a funeral parlour in Chungli, near Taoyuan International Airport where the Tuesday’s tragedy occurred.
Many relatives entering the funeral parlour sobbed uncontrollably the moment they saw portraits of their loved ones placed in the mourning hall. Some collapsed on the floor.
The 24 tourists from Liaoning province died shortly before their coach was due to arrive at the airport after an eight-day visit to the island.
Authorities are still investigating the cause of the accident but security footage showed smoke coming out of the bus as it travelled about 1.4km before colliding with a road barrier and bursting into flames. Everyone aboard the bus, including the bus driver and a local tour guide, perished in what was one of Taiwan’s deadliest bus accidents.
Relatives of mainland tourists who died in a bus blaze in Taiwan on Tuesday mourn at a funeral parlour in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan. Photo: AFP
A preliminary investigation shows that the fire that engulfed a tour bus in Taiwan was caused by electrical short-circuits near the driver's seat, prosecutors in the island's Taoyuan district said.
According to local media, an initial autopsy showed that the driver's respiratory tract was burned, a sign that he possibly inhaled high temperature smoke. The prosecutors said the driver was possibly poisoned by carbon monoxide and became unconscious, losing control of the bus.
The bus caught fire and crashed into a highway barrier en route to Taoyuan International Airport on Tuesday. All 26 on board, including the driver, a tour guide and 24 mainland tourists, were killed.
One of the major reasons for the heavy casualties was that the left-rear emergency exit failed to open. Investigators found that the exit had a lock system that should not have been there.
Safety inspectors check a tour bus in Taipei, Taiwan, on Thursday in the wake of a fire that killed 26 people, including 24 mainland tourists, on Tuesday. Photo: China Daily
They also discovered a similar lock system on another bus from the same company. Prosecutors said they would further investigate the buses.
Liu Kezhi, secretary-general of the Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits, said the mainland was extremely dissatisfied with Taiwan's safety measures for visiting mainland tourists.“We have asked Taiwanese authorities time and again to ensure the safety of mainland visitors after a number of traffic accidents involving mainland visitors, but still a fatal accident like this has occurred again,” he said.
Liu, sent by his association to Taiwan on Wednesday to help the victims’ relatives, made the comment earlier on Thursday after he paid respects to the deceased at the funeral parlor.
“We are highly dissatisfied about it,” said Liu, who headed a delegation of nine mainland officials to deal with the bus fire aftermath.
The mainland requests that Taiwan thoroughly investigate the accident and complete the work necessary to receive victims' family members, Liu told reporters outside a temporary shrine for the victims in Taoyuan's Zhongli district. Relatives of the deceased were taken to the shrine by Taiwan officials.
In response, Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng said Taiwan would work hard to raise the quality of its tourism services and examine problematic parts of the sector.
"We hope related departments in Taiwan can ascertain the true facts as soon as possible and handle the compensation work well, thus comforting those who have lost their loved ones," said Luan Xusheng, head of Dalian's working group for Taiwan and director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of Dalian.
"Staff from our community and various government institutions came to help us after the accident," said a woman surnamed Yao, who lost her nephew Jiang Xin in the fire.
Yao said Jiang, 30, and his wife, Gao Ling, 28, were on their honeymoon.
"It's really hard to accept the fact. They had lived in their new home for only three days," she said.
Since 2008, when Taiwan allowed mainland tourists to visit, 90 mainland visitors have been killed and 390 injured in traffic accidents, according to Taiwan government statistics.
Meanwhile, investigators said on Thursday that an electrical short circuit that might set the bus on fire.
“We have found that a fuse box underneath the driver’s seat had melted,” one investigator said, adding this could have been caused by a power overloaded.
The investigator added that the driver may have been overcome by smoke that began to fill the bus as soon as the fire started.
(SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, CHINA DAILY)
