"Passenger safety first" - The three of them urgently stopped 7 trains when an earthquake struck | Earthquake | Passengers
On August 6th at 2:33, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake occurred in Pingyuan County, Dezhou City, Shandong Province, with a depth of 10 kilometers. At that time, in the train operation room of Pingyuan County Railway Station, duty officers Shi Qiang, Ren Jizhen, and Ma Yifei, three railway workers, felt a strong earthquake and urgently picked up their duty phones to cooperate with each other to stop the Z176 passenger train from Hangzhou to Harbin West and six other trains running through Pingyuan Station.
"At that time, the desks, chairs, and computers in the train room were shaking violently. We realized it was probably an earthquake and didn't have time to think much about it. So we quickly contacted the dispatch to brake the train." Shi Qiang told People's Daily that within two minutes of the earthquake, they completed the braking of seven trains passing through Pingyuan Station, striving to prioritize passenger safety as much as possible.
It is reported that most of the threats to train safety before and after the earthquake are displacement, fracture, roadbed subsidence, and signal interruption of railway lines. Therefore, when an earthquake occurs, it is necessary to implement emergency braking on trains to stop them in a timely manner, in order to better protect the safety of passengers and minimize losses.
"In fact, we were very nervous at that time, but when the earthquake came, our first duty was to try our best to protect the safety of passengers, so we didn't think about anything else, so we quickly tried to stop the train." Shi Qiang said to the People's Daily Online that in ordinary times, the station would carry out emergency drills to simulate how the station attendant would handle emergencies, how to brake the train urgently, and how to ensure the safety of passengers and relieve passengers' anxiety when extreme events such as rainstorm, flood, power failure, and earthquake occurred. It is precisely the repeated emergency drills in the past that have enabled them to respond promptly to sudden earthquakes this time.
After the emergency braking of the train, Pingyuan County Railway Station promptly explained and guided the passengers to ensure that they could safely depart again after the earthquake.
Now, the 7 trains that were urgently braked have fully resumed normal operation at 6:30 am on August 6th. Shi Qiang, Ren Jizhen, and Ma Yifei returned to their work positions on the evening of August 6th to continue to ensure the safety of train operation.