Japan police raid train operator, 73 dead in crash

AMAGASAKI, Japan - Japanese police looking for clues to the cause of Japan's worst rail crash in four decades searched the offices of the train's owner on Tuesday as weeping relatives arrived at a makeshift morgue to take away loved ones among the 73 people confirmed killed.

Investigations were focusing on the speed the packed train was travelling when it jumped the tracks on the outskirts of the western city of Osaka and smashed into an apartment building just after rush hour on Monday morning.

Police who raided the offices of West Japan Railway Co (JR West) said they were investigating for possible professional negligence leading to death.

JR West President Takeshi Kakiuchi will resign to take responsibility for the disaster, in which another 440 people were injured, Kyodo news agency quoted a company official as saying.

At the accident scene, workers in hard hats were using heavy machinery to take apart one of the cars, while safety investigators began examining the site.

Television showed a man crouched and weeping outside the gymnasium where the bodies of the dead were taken.

Many people had spent the previous day making the rounds of local hospitals looking for friends or relatives.

Three people were pulled alive from the wreckage earlier on Tuesday but police said it was not clear if anyone was still trapped in the mass of twisted metal.

"I am filled with remorse that so many people were killed," JR West Chairman Shojiro Nanya told reporters while visiting the temporary morgue. "We will make every effort to take steps regarding those who lost their lives and their families."

Investigators said the cause of the crash was still unclear, but survivors among the some 580 passengers, as well as the train's conductor, said they believed the train was going faster than normal after falling behind schedule.

The train had overshot the previous station by about 40m and had to reverse back to the platform.

The driver, a 23-year-old man with 11 months experience, was pulled from the wreckage on Tuesday morning, but it was not clear if he was alive, Kyodo quoted police as saying.

The same driver also over-shot a station by 100m last June, railway officials said.

It was the worst train accident in Japan since 1963 when about 160 people were killed in a multiple train collision at Yokohama, near Tokyo, and the worst since Japan's rail network was privatised in 1987.

JR West, which was completely privatised a year ago, has been experiencing sluggish revenue growth and has been trying to improve profitability by cutting costs.

"If that made the company neglect its safety responsibilities, that would be a problem," the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said in an editorial.

Officials said a train could derail if it were travelling at nearly twice the 70km/h speed limit on the curved stretch of line where the accident occurred.

The automatic train stop system in the area was of the oldest type and had no ability to apply automatic brakes if a passing train was going too fast, the Transport Ministry said.

The accident was a blow to the efficient image of Japan's railway system, which boasts 27,000km of track and transports more than 20 billion passengers a year.

"We would like the operators of railways to once again recognise the weight of their responsibility for the lives with which they are entrusted," the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily said in an editorial.

Satoru Sone, a professor at Kogakuin University, told public broadcaster NHK the accident was probably due to multiple causes such as a brake malfunction, faulty rails and driver error.

JR West said investigators found marks on the tracks of the type left when a train runs over an object such as a stone, but it said it was not clear if this was related to the accident.

Japanese trains generally have a good safety record.

In Japan's last major accident, in March 2000, five people were killed and 33 were hurt when a Tokyo subway train ripped away the side of a carriage of an oncoming train that had derailed in its path during rush hour.

In May 1991, 42 people were killed and more than 600 injured in a crash in Shigaraki, western Japan.

Shares in JR West fell another 1.5 per cent in morning trading after dropping 3.6 per cent on Monday.

- REUTERS