INDIA TRAIN CRASH DEATH TOLL RISES TO 261, ESTIMATED 900 INJURED

Sat 03 June 2023:

Rescue workers raced against time to extract survivors from the debris after three trains collided tragically in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, killing at least 261 people.

According to Pradeep Jena, the state’s top civil servant, the disaster on Friday in the Balasore region of Odisha state, India’s bloodiest rail tragedy in over 20 years, also left an estimated 900 people injured.

The death toll is expected to rise, Jena said.

More than 200 ambulances had been called to the scene of the accident and 100 additional doctors, on top of 80 already there, had been mobilised to get the wounded to hospital and care for those still at the scene.

Army soldiers and air force helicopters joined the relief effort along with local authorities.

Death toll rises to 233 in the Balasore Train Accident. @CMO_Odisha @IPR_Odisha @RailMinIndia @SecyChief @SRC_Odisha

— Pradeep Jena IAS (@PradeepJenaIAS) June 3, 2023

On Friday evening, 17 coaches of the Coromandel Express and SMVT-Howrah Super Fast Express derailed, leading to one of the worst railway accidents in the country in the last 15 years.

In a bulletin, the SE Railway said: “Train number 12841 Shalimar-Chennai, Coromandal Express and Train number 12864 Sir M Visvesvaraya-Howrah Superfast Express got derailed near Bahanaga Bazar Railway station at around 6.55 p.m. on June 2.

The visuals from the accident site showed how the coaches of the two trains capsized on each other while NDRF and several other agencies used gas cutters to bring out the survivors from the mangled coaches.

An extensive search and rescue operation has been mounted, involving hundreds of fire department personnel, police officers and sniffer dogs. National Disaster Response Force teams were also at the site.

The cause of the accident was being investigated, said Amitabh Sharma, a spokesperson for Indian Railways. The details of the accident were not immediately clear, nor was the sequence of events.

A senior Railway Ministry official in Delhi said that the exact number of casualties will only be clear once the entire wreckage is sifted through.

He said that the rescue operation is still underway.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that rescue operations were under way and “all possible assistance” was being given to those affected.

Distressed by the train accident in Odisha. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon. Spoke to Railway Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw and took stock of the situation. Rescue ops are underway at the site of the mishap and all…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 2, 2023

Several hundred accidents occur every year on India’s railways, with most of them blamed on human error or outdated signalling equipment. More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, travelling on 64,000km (40,000 miles) of track.

The worst disasters in recent years include one in October 2018, when a train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in Punjab state, killing at least 60 people and injuring dozens more.

At least 146 people were killed in November 2016, when a passenger train travelling between the cities of Indore and Patna slid off the tracks. More than 200 people were injured in that accident.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

______________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent