纽约时报Train Wreck in China Heightens Unease on Safety Standards

Mahome

纽约时报：温州动车事故引发人们对铁路安全的质疑

BEIJING — A deadly train accident in eastern China has added to a national sense of unease that safety may have been sacrificed in the country’s rush to modernize.


By Sunday evening, 43 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage near Wenzhou, where a high-speed train that had lost power was struck from behind by another train on Saturday night, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Six cars derailed and four fell off a viaduct in the accident, which also injured 210 people.


In official, government-approved accounts of the accident, officials moved quickly to take charge of the situation. On Sunday morning, President Hu Jintao declared that rescue efforts were a top priority. The government also announced that three senior officials in the Railway Ministry had been fired. The railway minister was said to have taken charge of the rescue operation.


But competing narratives already began emerging Sunday. On the feisty microblogging site Sina Weibo, postings said that the minister, Sheng Guangzu, who took over this year when his predecessor was fired for corruption, had been cornered by angry journalists after he dodged interview requests.


Other reports on the site said the ministry was burying parts of the wrecked trains near the site, prompting critics to say that the wreckage needed to be carefully examined for causes of the malfunction. The Railway Ministry said the trains contained valuable “national level” technology that could be stolen and thus must be buried — even though foreign companies have long complained that the technology was actually stolen from their trains.


More confusion emerged over efforts to portray nature as the culprit in the accident. Xinhua reported Saturday that the first train lost power when it was hit by lightning, and national television broadcasts emphasized pictures of lightning storms in the area. But later reports by Xinhua said the supposedly stalled train was under way when it was struck by the other train. Also left unexplained was why railway signals did not stop the second train before it hit the first one.


An editorial with the headline “No Development Without Safety” on People’s Net, the government-run Web site affiliated with the party’s leading newspaper, People’s Daily, said the Railway Ministry had warned of the risks of lightning in a notice four days before the crash. It said new procedures were needed to prevent accidents. But it noted that these measures had not been put into effect, implying that the railway had no emergency plans for trains struck by lightning.


The editorial also made a broader point that spoke to widespread public dissatisfaction over safety.


“From public transport safety to coal mine safety to food safety, these accidents show that theoretically there is no problem with the conception of safety plans,” the influential site said. “But they are not executed properly.”


The train collision was one of several high-profile public transportation accidents in China recently. Early Friday morning, 41 people were killed when an overloaded bus caught fire in central Henan Province. Earlier this month, an escalator at a new subway station in Beijing collapsed, killing one person and injuring 28. Last week alone, four bridges collapsed in various Chinese cities.


Signaling the official concern over growing public unease, the government issued a directive on Saturday calling for “intensified efforts in preventing major deadly accidents.”


The discussion of accidents in China, however, is haphazard. In an unusually frank editorial in People’s Daily this month, a commentator said that many disasters were covered up but that the country needed “zero tolerance for concealing major accidents,” like a large oil spill that was hidden from the public for more than a month.


Fears that transparency and safety have become secondary to other concerns was present in many Weibo postings on Sunday. One blogger in particular posted an eloquent appeal for more care and caution in China’s rapid development: “China, please stop your flying pace, wait for your people, wait for your soul, wait for your morality, wait for your conscience! Don’t let the train run out off track, don’t let the bridges collapse, don’t let the roads become traps, don’t let houses become ruins. Walk slowly, allowing every life to have freedom and dignity. No one should be left behind by our era.”


周日，在中国东部的浙江省温州市附近发生动车追尾事故，火车车厢从高架桥上掉落，救援人员在事故现场。至少有35人死亡和210人受伤。


根据新华社报道，周六晚的火车事故是一列高速列车在断电二十多分钟之后被另一列火车追尾，在事故现场找到43具尸体。在温州市附近，六节车厢脱轨，四节车厢从高架桥上掉落，导致210人受伤。


来自政府的官方报道是，政府官员迅速采取救援行动。周日上午，国家主席**宣布，救援工作是重中之重。政府还宣布，铁道部的三名高级官员被解雇。铁路部长负责指挥救援行动。


但是，周日，开始出现了对事故叙述的不同版本。在喧嚣的微博网站新浪微博上有帖子说，今年上任的铁道部长盛光祖(其前任因F·B被革职)，因为回避采访要求而被愤怒的记者围攻。

该网站上还有帖子说，铁道部正在事故现场附近掩埋失事列车的部分残骸，批评家们说，应该仔细研究列车残骸以便查找故障原因。铁道部说，列车包含可能被窃取的宝贵的“国家级”技术，因此必须被埋没- 尽管外国公司长期以来一直抱怨该技术其实是从它们的进口列车偷窃的。

更为混乱的是对事故祸首性质的描述。新华社周六报道，第一列火车被雷电击中而断电，国家的电视节目强调了该地区雷电天气的照片。但是新华社后来的报道说，所称的停滞列车在被后面的列车撞上时正在开动。还留下没有解释的是,在追尾之前铁路信号为什么没能防止撞击。


dang的重要报纸人民日报所属的政府主办的网站人民网,标题为“没有安全就没有发展”的一篇社论中说道, 在动车追尾事故的4天前,铁道部发了雷击风险的警告通知。社论中说需要新的程序以防止发生意外。但社论中指出，这些措施尚未付诸实施，这意味着铁路并无应急预案应对遭雷电击中的列车。

社论还引申提到了公众对安全问题的普遍不满。

这个有影响力的网站上的社论说,“从公共交通安全，煤矿安全，到食品安全，这些事故表明，安全计划的概念在理论上是没有问题的，但是没有被正确地执行。”


这次火车事故是中国最近的几起重大公共交通事故之一。周五凌晨，在中国中部的河南省，一辆超载的巴士起火，41人死亡。本月初，在北京的一个地铁站的自动扶梯事故中，一人死亡， 28人受伤。仅上周的一周之内，中国各城市就有四座桥梁倒塌。

政府关注着公众日益的不安情绪，政府发出在周六下发指令要求 “加紧努力预防重大致命性事故。”

然而，在中国，对突发事件的讨论是杂乱无章的。本月初，dang报人民日报的社论中评论员很坦率地说中国需要对“隐瞒重大安全事故零容忍”，但评论员说许多事故都被隐瞒，比如上次的重大石油泄漏被从公众视野中隐瞒了一个多月。


星期日，微博上的许多帖子都表明人们感到透明度和安全性与其他问题相比是次要的。特别是，一个博客发帖子雄辩地呼吁在中国的快速发展中能有更多的关爱和谨慎：


“中国，请停下你飞奔的脚步，等一等你的人民，等一等你的灵魂，等一等你的道德，等一等你的良知！不要让列车脱轨，不要让桥梁坍塌，不要让道路成陷阱，不要让房屋成危楼。慢点走，让每一个生命都有自由和尊严，每一个人都不被“时代”抛下，每一个人都顺利平安地抵达终点。”

A-J

中国啥时能平稳地进步呢？

Mahome

标红的词句真的很体现西方的评论风格

aweek

胡温，上梁不正下梁歪。

不再熬夜

路过