When Will We Ever Learn?
Last Monday, two monorail trains in Klang Valley abruptly stopped in the middle of the track due to system failure causing thousands of commuters stranded at the train stations for hours. The air-conditioned in the two trains were shut down causing stuffy air in the packed monorails and the doors of the monorails were shut sending mostly women and children feeling panicked and some even fainted. Impatient commuters pried open the doors and a few even stand on the rails.
As interrupted public services happens all the times, it didn’t make it into the big news in the media. The spokeperson for the monorail company even said that their system is good enough that the last time such thing happened was last year. My concern is what is the precautionary actions the company takes in case of emergency such as fire? The failed proof doors could have kill hundreds in the trains.
I remembered a documentary of accident happened at a famous ski resort recounted by the victims in Discovery Channel. The train was not even powered by fuel and as usual during the holiday season, people make their way up the ski resort for holidays. It started with a small fire at the back of the train but the commuters were not able to tell the person operating the train as there were no speakers or cameras connecting to the head of the train. Soon as the train reached the middle of the tunnel, it stopped and the doors were jammed so people started breaking windows of the train. By the time the passengers at the front of the train realised what was happening, thick somke was already filling the whole tunnel. Panicked, most of the passengers followed their conscience and walked away from the fumes which is to go up the tunnel that is ascending the mountain. Another group of maybe twelve passengers led by a fireman among them told them to bear the smoke and go down the mountain.
Now where is the firemen you must be asking? Since they were at a high altitude and inside the tunnel, firemen were not able to reach them. The twelve people survived while the rest including a few at the resthouse (since the tunnel led to the resthouse) die of smoke inhalation and since then, steps of precaution has been taken to prewent such things from happening in the future.
Back to our local monorails failure few days ago, commuters have no other choice other than continue commuting through trains but what is the monorail management doing to ensure a better safety measures? Are they going to wait for people to sacrifice their lives before pointing fingers and feeling regrets for not having a safety measure? I wonder!
July 27th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Ooh, I heard the last failure was due to their Microsoft 2000 OS (on which their system runs) crashing. They should have switched to Linux after that. Bwahahahah
July 28th, 2006 at 6:14 am
I guess it’s typical human attitude, or rather, Malaysian’s attitude, ie “only cross the bridge when we come to it”.. i hear this phrase wayyyyy too often from my darn bosses!
July 28th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
whatever system they are using, they should be prepared in any situation.
Natallie, you were right. there’s also a chinese saying that ” don’t only dig a hole when u want to past motion or only find an umbrealla when it’s gonna rain”???. Malaysians are far from being a developed country and even further in terms of attitude and mentality.
July 28th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
whatever system they are using, they should be prepared in any situation.
Natallie, you were right. there’s also a chinese saying that ” don’t only dig a hole when u want to past motion or only find an umbrealla when it’s gonna rain”???. Malaysians are far from being a developed country and even further in terms of attitude and mentality.
July 31st, 2006 at 1:37 am
A fully computerised system means if the OS fails (this is seriously difficult to 100% prevent), the whole system fails. To prevent this, the only means is to include some manual operations into the system, which then ppl may criticise it being not “advance” enough. Also, a “safety measure” designed for one system problem may not work for another. I did not follow the trains stalling news closely - were the two incidents caused by the same problem? If they were indeed, then we can safely say these ppl never learned their lessons. If not …
However, I do agree with you guys that the Malaysian attitude is … well, whatever you have described it to be.
August 6th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
I don’t really know if the two incidents caused by the same problem but they happened on the same day and about the same time .
August 6th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
I don’t really know if the two incidents caused by the same problem but they happened on the same day and about the same time .