Scores killed in Jakarta train crash

Press, 20 October 1987, Page 1

Scores killed in Jakarta train crash

NZPA-AP Jakarta Two passenger trains collided head-on south of Jakarta yesterday, killing about 80 people and injuring about 300, the police said. A police spokesman said 50 of the dead had been taken to several Jakarta hospitals and about 30 others were still trapped in the wreckage. About 300 injured were sent to seven hospitals in the city. The two trains collided in the rush hour about 7.30 a.m. local time in the district of Bintaro Jaya, about 15km south of central Jakarta. One train, coming from Rangkas Bitung, 72km south of Jakarta, carried about 600 passengers while the other train, from Jakarta to the small town

of Merak, about 145 km west of Jakarta, carried about 300 passengers. The police said the train with 600 passengers, including some perched on top, was running at full speed as it approached a station about 3km away when the other train appeared on the same line. The impact of the collision rammed one of the carriages through another, the police said. A train station officer said officials were looking into why two trains could be on the same line at the same time. He said the morning train from Rangkas Bitung was always crowded with people going to work in Jakarta, and sometimes more than 50 would be perched on the train’s roof. In yesterday’s crash, some who

were clinging between carnages and on top of the train had time to jump before the collision. “We were so shocked when we saw another train coming on the same track there was no time to warn the others. We just jumped for our lives,” Sukirman, an employee of a Jakarta company, told Associated Press. Sukirman suffered only light bruises froth jumping. He said that when he had time to look, he saw the two trains ramming into each other “and in a minute there was the crash and people screaming.” He said the impact sounded like a bomb explosion. Rescue workers using hacksaws and .hammers said they were trying to recover the dead, trapped in the wreckage and piles of metal.