PICTURE SPEAK

HELPING HAND: an Indian Air Force chopper airlifts a survivor

The No. 415 Repalle-Secunderabad Delta fast passenger train was barely an hour away from completing its 400 km journey. The train was negotiating a curve at a relatively slow 60 kmph at Valigonda, about 70 km from the state capital Hyderabad, when it suddenly teetered off the tracks before plunging into the stream. For engine driver D. Samuel and 113 others, it was their last journey. The pre-dawn tragedy on October 29 was the worst ever in the history of Andhra Pradesh.

Among the first to inform Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, within an hour of the accident, was the Congress MP from Tenali, V. Bala Sowry. Ironically, the train had been introduced only six months ago at the behest of the MP, to serve as an additional direct service between Repalle in Guntur district and the state capital. The authorities lost no time in coordinating with railway officials and the Andhra Sub-Area Commander Brigadier U.W. Deshmukh to pull out survivors and bodies from mangled coaches submerged in water.

VIS-A-VIS

RAILWAYS: No warning in advance about release of water from reservoirs that flooded the tracks. FACT: Heavy rainfall in the area. The rail bridge was not designed to handle unprecedented flow of water. RAILWAYS:Patrolman was carried away downstream and could not warn the approaching train. FACT: It is unlikely that the patrolman was at his post when it rained. RAILWAYS: Around Rs 17,000 crore is to be spent on railway safety, including strengthening the bridges. FACT: Installation of sensors would give adequate warning.

Despite the heavy rain, Indian Air Force helicopters were pressed into service, using winches to pull up the survivors since the choppers were unable to land. Local people joined divers from the Indian Army, 200 men from the Bison Division, and others from the Railway Protection Force, the Rapid Action Force and the elite Greyhounds combat group of the Andhra Pradesh Police in the rescue operations.

Predictably enough, the blame game started shortly after the accident with railway authorities accusing the state's irrigation officials of failing to inform them about the release of water from the nearby Ramasamudram reservoir at Golnepalli. It is anybody's guess whether the authorities were tracking the water level of a desolate reservoir late on a rainy night. That the track and the bridge were safe even a couple of hours earlier is clear from the fact that at least two trains passed by without anyone raising an alarm.

Clearly, flash floods caused by heavy rain and the subsequent overflow had breached the embankment, leaving the railway line hanging in the air, and weakened the bridge. If anyone could have noticed it, it was the patrolman-the Indian Railways' foot soldier who checks tracks and bridges manually round-the-clock. He could have alerted approaching trains as was the practice in the past. "But patrolman K. Bandaiah could not alert anyone as he himself had been washed away by the gushing waters and was rescued downstream with injuries," says acting South Central Railway General Manager Thomas Varghese.

PICTURE SPEAK

IN TROUBLED WATERS: Army divers search for survivors

Even if the patrolman was not around, as was the case when the tragedy struck, a cautious driver could have noticed the overflow of water and raised an alarm. "I was shocked to see the rails floating on water from a distance, and before I could alert driver Samuel, the tragedy struck us," recalls assistant driver D. Sreenivasa Rao. At the same time, he says, the train driver applied the emergency brakes. "He was maintaining a speed of 60 kmph as we were negotiating a curve and had he not applied his mind, things would have been worse," says Rao.

The responsibility is yet to be pinned, but the railway and irrigation authorities are locked in a spat over the breach of the reservoir. Says Varghese: "Irrigation officials periodically warn us about vulnerable tanks or reservoirs. But we did not receive any such warning in this case."

He points out that the bridge was relatively new. "It seems to have been washed away due to a sudden gush of water between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m," he adds. Varghese reckons that about 200 m of track would need to be restored, including the 6-metre bridge. However, Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah disputes the railway's contention, pointing out that "the discharge from several reservoirs that night had reached an unprecedented 51,187 cusecs in four hours while the railway bridge was designed to handle only 2,066 cusecs". The discharge was 25 times more than the designed capacity. Besides, there was almost 32 cm of rain in the area which it had not experienced in 30 years.

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SWELLING RANKS: Residents of Valigonda assist in the operation

While the blame game continues, it is clear that neither the railways nor the irrigation authorities had accounted for such unprecedented rainfall. The tragedy has also highlighted that a manual check and an alert from a patrolman in harsh weather is not adequate either. In fact, the railways employ 14 men to keep a round-the-clock watch over every 7 km of track. In addition, during the rainy season, it deploys a special patrolling team solely to check bridges and culverts. Experts say that besides manual monitoring, an ideal additional safety measure would be to fix special sensors on sensitive bridges to forewarn about impending disasters.

Union Minister of State for Railways R.Velu says a large part of the Rs 17,000 crore allocated for railway safety is spent on strengthening bridges and reconstructing the old ones. Unfortunately, it took the Valigonda tragedy to highlight that such measures will no longer be sufficient without additional warnings from sensors.

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