Falling in the water

The Labasa journalists are writing some pretty weird stories this week - first a woman falls into the sea from the ferry near Savusavu and now the sugar train drops bundles of cane into the Labasa River to sweeten it up!

Rail carts drop into river with cane
Wednesday, June 17, 2009FSC workers help put up the rail cart that fell into the Labasa river on Monday afternoon.

A LOCOMOTIVE operator escaped injury after the rail carts he was towing went off the track on a bridge and plunged into the Labasa River on Monday night.

Yesterday morning, a group of Fiji Sugar Corporation workers and cane farm labourers were on the bridge putting the carts back together and collecting scattered cane.

A cart carries about three and a half tonnes of cane, at the value of $61 a tonne.

Samisoni Tunatui was drinking grog at a taxi stand in the Labasa market when he saw the three carts go off track before one fell into the river. The second cart hung on under the bridge while the third remained on the bridge but it was derailed.

Mr Tunatui said he and some friends ran to the bridge and when they got there, they saw the locomotive had stopped at one end of the bridge, on the mill side and the three carts had fallen off at the opposite end of the bridge, toward the Grand Eastern Hotel.

He said cane from the three carts fell into the river.

The Fiji Sugar Corporation said crushing at the Labasa Mill started last week.