Twenty-eight commuters and the driver were injured when a train overshot Platform 8 at Cape Town station on Friday. The accident happened when the sixth train carrying morning commuters from Wellington overshot the platform shortly after 8am.
Metrorail spokesperson Riana Jacobs said most of the commuters, including the train driver, were being treated for slight to very slight injuries at the Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town.
She said 14 of the injured were able to walk unaided while six others with slight injuries were stretchered away. The remainder were treated for shock.
She said the company had set up a trauma centre with counselling services and staff on hand to assist with enquiries on the station.
Platforms 7 to 9 and the station concourse had been temporarily closed to the general public in order to assist investigators and crews involved in clean-up operations.
Jacobs said most trains were operating normally. Trains using platforms 7 and 9 had been re-routed to other platforms at the station.
An information centre toll free call centre had been set up for commuters needing updates on the status of the service.
Metrorail expressed its sympathy to those who were injured and affected by the accident. Western Cape health MEC Piet Meyer was on the scene minutes after the accident.
”I needed to know the extent of the accident and if our medical emergency services were coping. Luckily the accident was not one of disastrous proportions and the injured are being treated,” Meyer said.
Early reports said it appeared the train’s brakes failed but this could not be confirmed. Local government MEC Cobus Dowry said the Metropolitan Disaster
Management Centre had been activated and was in contact with the city’s disaster management team on the station where activities had been coordinated.
Dowry said his department would assist where necessary and monitor the situation and conduct an investigation into the accident.
A commuter on the train travelling from Bonteheuwel, Faizel Faried, who was in one of the rear carriages, said there was a loud noise as the train smashed into a wall at the end of the tracks and many people fell forward.
A vendor who declined to be identified said he heard a loud noise and there was dust everywhere. A caller to Cape Talk radio said he was getting off a train two
platforms away. ”The train didn’t stop. it just went straight into the building,” he said.
”Initially people thought it was a bomb that went off because there was just sparks and no one was actually concentrating on that there was a train coming.”
Another caller to the radio station said she had just alighted from the Simon’s Town train and was walking along the platform when she heard a train coming.
”I looked to my right and I thought ‘that train is not going to stop.’
”It didn’t even appear to be braking. It just went straight through the wall. There were sparks flying.”
All entrances to the station were sealed off with steel doors and no one was allowed into the station.
The only people on the station were commuters entering Cape Town.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the newly inaugurated board of the Railway Safety Regulator, said one of the body’s functions would be to conduct investigations or appoint somebody to investigate train accidents.
”The approach is not to try and apportion blame but to enhance safety prospects in the rail industry,” said chairperson Sipho Madonsela.
He said that the responsibility of implementing recommendations ultimately rested with operators, such as Metrorail.
”We will just oversee and monitor the process.”
Asked whether the accident would be one of the first cases the regulator would look into, Madonsela said that they were hamstrung because a CEO still had to be appointed.
”There are many accidents happening on daily basis … but the capabilities of the regulator must first be improved before it can conduct investigations, but this does not mean the board is blindfolded to what is happening,” he said.
He said that at present there was only a ”very skeletal structure”, with a board appointed, a project team of four and sundry others.
”Without the appointment of the CEO we can’t function normally,” he said.
National Metrorail spokesperson Tshidiso Moshao did not want to comment but said the company was preparing a statement. – Sapa