Last Thursday, it was three weeks since the train accident near my work, at the station I use. The day it happened, I arrived before the accident, and when I left to go home, there was a sea of plushies, flowers, candles, drawings, and people crying. The next day, they’d added tents to protect the “gifts” from the rain.
(I considered walking to the next station (approx 20 min) because of how odd it was to get up there and take a train when four deaths were to mourn because of one, but it had been a tough day and it’s not like it would’ve made a difference. But odd it was.)
Last Thursday, I arrived to see it all for the last time. When I left to go home, it had already been removed. This is understandable: not only was the mourning ceremony the sunday before, but in order to make room for the makeshift memorial, half the road had been block off and that’s a pretty important road for the area. Plus, there’s been a fundraiser some of which funds are planned to go to a permanent monument that’ll likely be placed on that spot (it’s pretty much the only available space).
(Time will reduce what I can remember of the spot, but I’ll definitely not forget the wooden plaque with four Nijntje(Miffy)-like rabbits sleeping peacefully that was located in the right corner.)
The two survivors (the caretaker and an 11-year old girl who lost her two younger sisters) are still in the hospital. They’re recovering; another part of the funds is for hospital bills and any adjustments to their homes if so needed.
In the past three weeks and going, the news has spent a lot of time on not just covering the accident, but also on the general safety of level crossings (this one was a guarded crossing) and those of stints (a type of electric cart that has been in use to transport small children to daycare and school in the past few years). It’s still unclear how the accident happened, though for the most part the design of the stint is blamed as inherently unsafe due to a sloppy construction and unintuitive controls. (Much as I’m willing to believe it, I do object to the “scandalized retroactive ofcourse!” nature with which some people go after the stint.) As far as level crossings are concerned, there’s been renewed desire to get rid of them as much as possible by raising or lowering either the tracks or roads, but in many cases there’s no money or space to do so within any forseeable time. The company taking care of the tracks is, however, going to take immediate action to remove unguarded level crossings, which have been controversial for some years now. (Contrary enough, one of the theories for the accident’s cause is that the electronics of the level crossing interferred with those of the stint, preventing it from stopping. If so, then that accident wouldn’t have happened at an unguarded level crossing.)