FOUR INJURED IN CROWDED BANQIAO STATION ACCIDENT|板橋車站人擠人 四人因推擠受傷送醫

As Christmas approaches, there has been a lot of Christmas parties recently across Taiwan. On Dec. 17, four people were injured while walking on an idle escalator at the Banqiao station, after attending a Christmas party held by the New Taipei City government. Even though the TRA has turned off the escalator beforehand, it started moving suddenly because it was overloaded with passengers. We remind you of your safety when attending events during the holiday season. An escalator serving Banqiao station's second platform was crowded with people. Suddenly, the idle escalator started moving, causing people to trip and fall. During the chaos, some screamed, and some yelled "running upwards". Four people, including one Vietnamese, and three Taiwanese females, were injured in the accident. ==SHANG SHAO-HUA, First Corps Captain of Fire Department at New Taipei City== The accident happened when the injured were taking the escalator down. They suffered lacerations on their scalps, and ankle sprain. Taiwan Railways Administration said that on Dec.17, they have already turned off the escalator around 9.pm. for the sake of safety. Around 10 p.m., the station was crammed with 30,000 passengers, as people attending a Christmas party outside the New Taipei City Hall started to go home. The idle escalator moved due to excessive load of people walking up and down. ==CHANG YUNG, Head of Banqiao train station== We turned the escalator off around 9.p.m. yesterday (Dec 17). We plan to turn it off earlier at 4p.m. today. We will also initiate passenger flow control. We will plan different routes for those attending the concert and regular passengers. Since Christmas events held by the New Taipei City government will continue until Jan, 2, 2017., the TRA turned the escalator off on Dec.18 around 4.pm to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Besides shutting off its power supply, the TRA said it will also place rope barriers to ward people off the escalator. TRANSLATED BY：ARIEL HSIEH 從民眾拍下的影片當中，可以看到板橋車站月台已的人潮已經漫延到手扶梯上，混亂中，有人尖叫，有人大喊往上跑，這時已經有人跌倒受傷，其中1名傷者為外籍女性，另外3名台籍民眾則是一對母女和一名63歲的謝女士。 ==新北市消防大隊第一大隊長 尚少華== 因為搭乘電扶梯下去的時候 有發生一些意外 分別是頭部有撕裂傷 以及腳有扭傷的狀況 回到事發現場，位在台鐵板橋站南下第二月台手扶梯，上午已經拉起封鎖線檢修，台鐵調出監視器佐證，表示因應散場人潮，台鐵在17號週六晚間九點就已經停止手扶梯運轉，不過沒想到因為人太多，在散場時，板橋車站大約湧入三萬名旅客，停止的電扶梯被當成樓梯走，上下震動，造成意外。 ==台鐵板橋站長 張雍== 昨天是在九點關閉電扶梯 我們今天的計畫是提早關閉 在四點的時候我們就關閉電扶梯 然後再啟動我們管制的分流措施 讓參觀演唱會的旅客 跟坐車的旅客 能夠做一個動線的區隔 台鐵表示意外當時，電扶梯沒有運轉，但無法承受人潮走動的震動，由於新北市耶誕城活動持續到明年1月2日，為了避免意外，週日下午四點起，封閉月台手扶梯，除了關閉電力，還會以紅龍圍住。 記者 綜合報導