Thursday, January 31, 2013

KTM Train Accident

I was one of the many unfortunate people who was involved in the train accident on 26th January 2013. It was at approximately 1530hrs and happened near Kempas Baru. The weather was fine. No rain. No storm. Just fine.

This how I recount what happened on that very day.

I knew something was wrong when the train started to shake violently. I told my friend to hold on tight. In my mind the train will soon turned and toppled. Just the matter of when. It was fast. It was really fast. That's how I felt it. The train was moving really fast. The next thing I know my friend fell on top of me.

We just crashed.

He must fell over when the train toppled. For a moment I lost the sense of direction. I was confused temporary. I stood up and looked at my friend and asked if he was alright. That's was in my mind. Even though my head was spinning and I felt of falling again.

My friend panicked. So he told me to grab our stuff and looked for a way out. He just wanted to go out. We climb up the messy cabin and tried looking for the door. There was old couple, children and few couple family in the cabin with us. They seem shocked but alright. The door was stuck. The windows were to hard to break. There was no emergency window breaker in sight.

We then went to the other door and told everyone to follow us. It's the only hope and for the other door to be unblocked. We were lucky.

With the remaining strength I have, I climbed up and from there I saw the damaged. Five coach was derailed and toppled sideway. Everyone is helping one another out. The sight was truly amazing. Nobody cares who they are and who they helping. Just all united to get everyone to safety. I helped to a point of almost fainted due to the heat stroke. The metal was hot adding the heat making me spinning.

I told my friend to call 999 for help. Help did come but two hours later. We were in the middle of the forest with minimum landmarks. We can't blame them for taking so long. I do hope with the current technology in the world, we should by now have an effective system of sending S.O.S. to reduce the time taken to reach the scene.

Few passengers broke their arm. Most of us had bruises on the body. A girl knocked her head to bleed. The most sad sight was the guy who was trapped and broke his spine. I hope everyone would be able to recover fully. The train company should take full responsibility for the event. Until now there was no calls from the company checking if everything is alright with us. I was utterly disappointed with the train company. Honestly.

I actually did hurt my head. I didn't realised it. I was busy helping others to safety. We all are. The pain only started the next day and the bruises and soreness started to kicked along.

It was my first time taking the intercity train in this country. It was an experience alright. A painful and terrible experience but I would be fine.