Faulty brakes cause fire, smoke on two LRT trains

Two braking failure incidents on the Kelana Jaya LRT four-car trains occurred today, causing brief fire and excessive smoke on the trains.

The first incident occurred at the Setiawangsa station at 8:19am, disrupting its services until 8.45am, while the second incident happened at the Universiti station at 12:18pm. Services then went back to normal 17 minutes later.

A total of 53 passengers were safely transferred to a rescue train at the Universiti station and no passengers were reported injured during the two incidents.

Prasarana Malaysia Berhad apologised for the incident.

"Rapid Rail wishes to apologise to its customers for inconvenience caused resulting from two incidents of braking failures of the Kelana Jaya LRT four-car trains today. We have highlighted this subject of the four-car trains' brake failure to the public in February and what happened today is actually is a continuation of the same problem," said Rapid Rail Sdn Bhd CEO, Ahmad Nizam Mohd Amin in a statement.

He said while facing this challenge, the safety of passengers was never compromised and Rapid Rail had immediately dispatched to commence efforts to evacuate the passengers.

"In today’s incident, all passengers were already transferred to rescue train when the brief fire occurred. Both fires were put off by Rapid Rail rescue team members by using fire extinguishers in the trains," he said.

According to Ahmad Nizam, both suppliers, Bombardier and Knorr Brake Company have acknowledged that there is a design issue.

"As of today, some 40 percent of the 560 units of brake calipers have been fitted with new brake seals. This is, however, only a containment measure as Bombardier and Knorr Brake Company come out with a permanent solution," he added.