40 minutes in stranded LRT
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 | 12:12 pm @ SK
To those who travel on Putra Light Rail Transit (LRT) everyday, you should have known what happened to the service yesterday.
For those who fortunately miss the accident, over 1,000 passengers were left stranded in the tunnel between the Central Market and Dang Wangi stations when the electric-powered trains suddenly stopped at 7pm.
No one was seriously injured in the incident except for four women who fainted in the trains’ coaches, where all three trains were packed with between 300 and 400 people on their way home after work.
"The passengers in the three trains waited for about an hour before exiting via the emergency doors." […]A passenger on one of the trains, Vijaya Nachiaappan, 36, said that he was disappointed by the slow response by the management of the service in bringing the passengers to safety.
"People became panicky after waiting almost 40 minutes for the train to move and started kicking its doors before the emergency doors were managed to be opened," he said.
One must be pondering why there isn’t any swift evacuation during emergency? You don’t need scientific brain to realize being stranded in a packed environment for 40 minutes is totally unbelievable and unacceptable!
Also, Malaysia Mega Sales Carnival 2006 kicked off a few days ago, imagine tourists among those who are stucked in there? What an experience!
Something is amiss.