Thaindian News

Beijing, July 24 (IANS) “Run! You run! It’s okay if grandma dies,” a woman shouted at her grandson after a high-speed train crash in China’s Zhejiang province. The woman, however, survived the accident that left at least 35 people dead and over 200 injurd.

The high-speed train derailment occurred at 8.38 p.m. in the city of Wenzhou Saturday.

When the accident occurred, 62-year-old Feng, her husband and 14-year-old grandson were in the No. 4 carriage of high-speed train D301.

After the accident, the first few carriages of D301 plunged off of an elevated bridge,
while the last two coaches of the other train D3115 derailed.

“The lights suddenly went off. The carriage began shaking heavily and passengers were stumbling around,” Xinhua quoted Feng as saying.

“We didn’t know what happened, but I instinctively shouted to my boy, ‘Run! You run! It’s okay if grandma dies’,” Feng said.

She addedthat some passengers managed to shatter the carriage’s window and they jumped out.

“We had no idea about the height, we just jumped.”

Feng and the other passengers fell roughly 20 meters from the window to the ground.

Passengers in the other train also recounted the horror.

“Our train stopped for more than 20 minutes, the attendants said it was
because of the lightning. But after the train started off again shortly, I felt
a heavy pounding and then the power went off,” recalled a woman surnamed Sun who was in train D3115 with her five-year-old daughter.

Yu Zhuoshuai, one of more than 600 firefighters who participated in the rescue operations conducted after the crash, said his 28-member team rushed to the site.

“The carriages were severely deformed, so we had to cut through the wreckage to get in,” Yu said.

Yu found many passengers trapped under their seats or under piles of luggage.

“They were tightly squeezed and could barely speak,” Yu said, adding that his team pulled out more than 10 passengers.

According to Wenzhou city mayor Zhao Yide train D3115 was carrying more than 900 passengers at the time of the accident, while train D301 was carrying over 500.