Many of the journalists working on the Wenzhou train crash story are finding it hard to believe the railway ministry’s denials that it’s burying train bodies and parts to hide the truth.
Reporter Zhu Fangqing (朱方清) published the following picture on his Sina Weibo page which appears to show trains getting disassembled and prepared for burial:
Earlier today, Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post also published the following two pictures from Xinhua News Agency. The first picture shows an excavator destroying a train carriage, and the second one shows a container of disassembled parts which it says are being sent to the Wenzhou West station for “inspection”:
In an interview with the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV, Shinkansen expert Satoru Sone (曾根悟) who has over half a century of railway experience below his belt criticised China for the way it handled the accident, saying it had a “very backward” crisis management system.
“To get to the root of any problem, it’s very important to keep the site as it is. You can’t just move the train compartments around. Of course, it is of utmost importance to save lives, but once rescue efforts are over, it’s still important not to move about the carriages as far as possible, so you can analyse the situation from multiple angles. Disassembling the trains and burying them — that’s just unbelievable,” he told Phoenix TV.
The Shinkansen has not had a single major accident like the Wenzhou crash in its 47-year history, despite regular earthquakes and typhoons in Japan.
Watch Phoenix TV’s interview with Satoru Sone after the jump…