EXPO Guests Lose Their Way Home

Osaka Metro Chuo Line, one of the subway lines in Osaka, stopped with trouble of blackout from late night on August 13th to early morning of August 14th. The line is the only public train that connects the site of Osaka Kansai EXPO 2025, which is on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, and downtown Osaka. About 30 thousand people were left in the EXPO site and a large number of them stayed until next morning in highly hot and humid environment. The transportive accident revealed vulnerability of international event in a closed land. 

It was about half past 9 p.m. on August 13th when Chuo Line stopped. Osaka Metro found that electricity for the subway lost power by short circuit on the third rail located between Yumeshima station, where EXPO site was, and Cosmo Square station. The blackout was caused by wrapping sheet covering a connecting point of the third rail. It is supposed that iron powder or dust was attached on the sheet.

 

The trouble was recovered after the sheet was removed. The subway tried to make shuttle operation between those two stations, but it was intervened for sometimes. The information about train operation was not provided in a timely manner, many guests abandoned to get back home and stayed in the EXPO site.

 

The exhibition of Osaka Kansai EXPO 2025 is taken place between April and October in the site built on an artificial island, named Yumeshima, landfilled offshore Osaka. Although some visitors come to the site by their cars, seventy percent of them use Chuo Line subway that connects downtown Osaka and Yumeshima through an undersea tunnel.

 

The EXPO accepted 136 thousand guests on April 13th. Although the site was to be closed at 10 p.m., about 30 thousand people remained in the site when the subway stopped. It was the first case for the visitors of EXPO to be unable to get back home since the beginning of exhibition in April.

 

While some could return home with taxi, a lot of people decided to stay at the EXPO site. The association for EXPO 2025 did not grasp how many stayed. It was a mid-summer tropical night in Osaka on August 13 with lowest temperature of 28.2 degree Celsius. Before the subway train restart its operation next morning, 36 people were transported to hospitals with ambulance.

 

Although some pavilions of foreign countries kept open after 10 p.m. at the night, most people spent the night outdoors without any air conditioning. It was around 4 a.m. when the association started distribution of bottles of water. Many parents laid down their small kids on the artificial lawn. Aged people spent time sitting on the benches, because they were unable to rest themselves on a hard ground.

 

The island has access of busses or ferry. But they did not work well, because alternative transportation was not informed to the guests of EXPO. To deal with the people who lost their way home is one of the biggest issues for a great disaster in urban area such as Tokyo or Osaka. The overnight stay in Osaka Kansai EXPO site would be a drill of possible great earthquake in a big city.

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