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Sydney train crash toll lowered
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- The death toll from one of Australia's worst train accidents has been lowered from nine to eight, as it was revealed equiment key to the investigation into the cause was not operational at the time of the crash. Police said the earlier estimate of nine killed was "the result of extraordinary difficulties with disaster victim identification at the scene," The Associated Press reports. Three people are also listed as critically injured after the derailment, which occurred during the morning rush hour Friday near the town of Waterfall, about 20 miles (30 km) south of Sydney. The train was carrying passengers south down the coast of New South Wales toward Port Kembla. Access to the site was a major concern as some rescue workers were dropped into the crash scene by helicopters, while others had to walk from ambulances parked nearby to the wreck. New South Wales Transport Minister Carl Scully revealed Saturday that a black-box recording device retrieved from the train --similar to an aircraft's flight recorder-- had not been working. "There is no useful information on it and it was not operational," Scully told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. An independent judicial inquiry was launched by the New South Wales state goverment on Friday to determine the cause of the accident as speculation continued that excessive speed caused the train to derail and slam into a sandstone embankment. Rescue workers said Friday the train was likely traveling about 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour when it crashed, even though it was in a 50 kph (30 mph) zone, The Associated Press reports. Authorities refused to comment on the speculation.
Investigators will stage a reconstruction of the derailment, and one of the train's carriages has been removed from the site and will be taken to Sydney. The Sydney Morning Herald Saturday quoted a passenger in the second car of the train as telling a friend the train was traveling too fast. "I don't know how we're going to make it alive. We're going too fast," Krstana Eftimovski was reported as saying. Another passenger sitting further back in the train, said she felt it accelerate just before the accident. "I may have been dozing but just south of Waterfall, the train seemed to just suddenly speed up to the point that the people in my carriage kind of looked up in alarm," Nonee Walsh, of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was quoted as saying. It was Australia's worst train smash since January 1977, when a train crashed in Granville, western Sydney, killing 83. "It's not been a happy start to this year in different ways for Australia and this is the latest in a series of challenges that we have," Austrlian Prime Minister John Howard told Radio 3LO Friday. "I am absolutely dismayed and very saddened by what appears to be a quite terrible accident." Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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