HUALIEN, Taiwan – Crawling among the smoky wreckage, she first found her husband and son trapped under the luggage and shattered steel lockers, but they were not breathing. Then she called her daughter’s name. A weak voice replied, “I’m right here.”
Following the voice, Hana Kacaw found her daughter under a mass of metal parts on a train. She tried to pull pieces of the wreckage, but to no avail. “Please wait,” she asked. “Someone is coming to rescue us.”
“I can’t take it any longer,” replied the daughter, according to Ms. Kacaw. Those were his last words.
Simply put, Ms. Kacaw had lost her husband over 20 years ago and her 21-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter, both promising college athletes. They were among the 51 people who died on Friday when a train derailed along Taiwan’s east coast, in the island’s worst disaster in four decades. Others who died included the two train drivers, at least two small children, as well as a French and an American citizen.
The eight-car Taroko Express train was nearly full, with about 490 passengers – including 120 or more who had exclusive standing tickets – on the first day of a long holiday weekend in Taiwan. Authorities say the train, which headed for the eastern city of Taitung, probably collided with a construction vehicle that rolled down a slope onto the runway and hit a tunnel.
Authorities, who promised a full investigation, said on Saturday that a suspect was interrogated and then released on bail. The government also said it could indemnify families at about $ 190,000 for each deceased person, although it would finalize the amount later.
On Saturday, rescuers rescued all those who presumed to have survived and were using bulldozers to try to remove the wagons from the train. The victims were the biggest in several wagons – numbered 5 to 8 – that were trapped inside the tunnel. Mrs. Kacaw, who was in Car 8, in front of the train, ended up finding her way out of the tunnel alone.
After spending a sleepless night in a hotel, she joined dozens of other bereaved relatives on Saturday in the arduous and painful task of identifying the remains and saying goodbye.
They met at a temporary support center set up under tents outside a funeral home in Hualien, a town south of the accident site. They took turns to enter a morgue where the bodies were being kept, and many left shaken and disturbed. Some discussed funeral arrangements and reviewed autopsy reports, while volunteers, Christian pastors and Buddhist monks – and even President Tsai Ing-wen, briefly – offered comfort.
For some families, mourning was complicated by uncertainty. Some relatives were frustrated that they were unable to identify their loved ones, but officials said they hoped the DNA samples would help. The impact of the accident was so great and the destruction so severe, the officials explained, that in several train cars, rescue workers were only able to remove remains in parts.
Inside those cars, the acrid smell of blood hung in the air, Zeng Wen-Long, a volunteer Red Cross rescue worker, said in an interview. It was there, also in car 8, that Zeng’s team met Yang Chi-chen, 5, who was traveling with his older sister and father, trapped under a chair.
More than an hour passed before the team reached her on Friday, and she was already very weak. Zeng said he carried her to her father, Max Yang, who was leaning against the tunnel and called the rescue team, asking to hold the child still.
Mr. Yang, 42, said he tried to call her to wake her up. Several times, he said, her eyes opened before closing again. “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Yang to her.
When they arrived at the hospital, Yang said, Chi-chen had died. She was one of the youngest victims. Her 9-year-old sister remains in the ICU.
On Saturday, Yang returned to the crash site – a tunnel through green mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean – with other bereaved relatives to “call back the soul”, a traditional Taoist mourning ritual typically performed by accident victims.
Facing the placid blue waters, family members shouted for their loved ones who died in the accident.
“Come home!” they shouted towards the tunnel, where workers in yellow helmets had stopped work on restoring the damaged railroad and removing the wagons. “It’s time to go now!”
Yang said Chi-Chen, an unruly girl, was excited to spend the long weekend at an ocean-themed amusement park in Hualien, known for its dolphin show.
“Yang Chi-chen, stop playing in the water now, we are leaving!” lamented Mr. Yang, who still had a catheter in his hand and bandages on his injured cheek. “Let’s take the bus to have fun somewhere else!”
On an observation deck above the other families, Ms. Kacaw, the woman who lost her husband and two children, wept softly as a Christian pastor conducted a prayer.
His son, Kacaw, and his daughter, Micing, were students and athletics stars at National Taiwan Sport University in Taoyuan, a city near Taipei. They were a close-knit family and maintained a deep connection with their indigenous ethnic group, the Amis.
Kacaw said he enjoyed playing badminton with his daughter in his New Taipei neighborhood and listening to his son play the guitar. She said the children were introverted, as was her father, Siki Takiyo, whom she described as a soft-spoken university administrator.
Now, all three are gone, and Mrs. Kacaw’s pain was compounded by guilt as she struggled to understand how they could have died while she survived.
She said she couldn’t stop thinking about how she had asked her children to return to their ancestral home in eastern Taiwan. She wanted them to see their grandparents and pay their respects at the grave of their ancestors. The children agreed, although their daughter had a running competition and her son was preparing for exams.
On Friday morning, the family missed the train they had originally booked. A kind ticket vendor on the platform offered to upgrade them to the Taroko Express, which would get them there faster. On the train, she sat in the back of the first car, while her husband and children were in the front – the part of the train that would later absorb the greatest impact.
For Mrs. Kacaw, the apparent randomness of it all was unbearable.
“Why didn’t I go with them?” she asked, in tears. “Why did I ask my children to come home with me?”
After the prayer, she sat in a wheelchair, stunned, a large cotton bandage on her forehead. Tears streamed down her face as she looked out at the ocean. A light rain started to fall.
“My only wish is for them to enter my dreams tonight,” she said.
Joy Dong reported from Hong Kong.