A train accident in eastern India on Friday was the country’s worst rail disaster in two decades, killing more than 270 people and renewing questions about rail safety in a country that has heavily invested in the system, in which trusted by millions of people every day, in recent years after a long history of fatal accidents.
How many people are confirmed dead?
Two passenger trains collided around 7pm local time on Friday after one of them struck a speeding parked freight train and derailed in the Balasore district of Odisha state, according to an initial government report. At least 275 people have died, according to the state government on Sunday, revising a previous death toll of 288 after an official said some victims had been double counted. More than 1,000 passengers were injured.
In a preliminary assessment, authorities say the disaster began when the first of two passenger trains hit the idle freight train at full speed and then derailed. A second passenger train, heading in the opposite direction, collided with some of the dislocated carriages. Officials are targeting signal problems as the probable cause.
More than 2,200 passengers in total were on board the passenger trains, according to railway officials, and at least 23 carriages derailed. The force of the collision left the cars so mangled that rescuers used cutting equipment to reach the victims.
One of the trains was a Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express train, according to South Eastern Railway. He Coromandel Express The service connects the largest cities on the east coast of India at a relatively high speed. The other passenger train was a Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express, which ran from a commuter hub in the southern city of Bengaluru to Kolkata, the capital of the northeastern state of West Bengal.
Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said he had ordered an investigation into the cause and those affected by the accident would receive compensation.
Where did the train crash in India?
The accident occurred at the Bahanaga Bazar station near Balasore, a city near the coast in the northeastern state of Odisha. The area is known for its ancient temples and its history as a 17th-century British trading post.
Balasore is several hours drive from the nearest airport, in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha. May is usually the hottest time of the year and daily temperatures reached 100 degrees in the days leading up to the accident.
The rescue operation ended on Saturday. Dozens of trains had been cancelled, but crews successfully restored service in both directions Sunday night after pulling crashed cars off the tracks. But the delays meant that the families of the victims struggled to reach the crash site, and many bodies remain unclaimed, according to local officials and doctors.
How common are train derailments in India?
Often referred to as crucial to India’s economy, the country’s vast rail network is one of the largest in the world and is critical to life and livelihoods, particularly in the most rural pockets. Almost all of India’s railway lines, 98 percent, were built between 1870 and 1930, according to a 2018 study published in The American Economic Review.
The deadliest accident in Indian railway history is believed to have occurred in 1981, when a passenger train derailed while crossing a bridge in Bihar state. Their cars plunged into the Bagmati River, killing some 750 passengers; many bodies were never recovered.
Derailments were once frequent in India, averaging 475 per year from 1980 to around the turn of the century. They have become much less common, averaging just over 50 per year in the decade leading up to 2021. according to a paper by railway officials presented at the World Congress on Disaster Management.
Overall, rail safety has improved in recent years, with the total number of serious rail accidents steadily falling to 22 in fiscal 2020, down from more than 300 annually two decades ago. By 2020, for two years in a row, India had recorded no passenger fatalities in rail accidents, a milestone hailed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Until 2017, more than 100 passengers died each year.
Even so, fatal accidents have persisted. In 2016, 14 train carriages derailed in northeast India in the middle of the night, killing more than 140 passengers and injuring 200 others. Authorities at the time said a “fracture” in the tracks may have been responsible. . In 2017, an overnight derailment in southern India killed at least 36 passengers and injured 40 others.
Friday’s crash was the deadliest since at least a 1995 collision some 125 miles from Delhi that killed more than 350 people.
What does the accident mean for India’s Prime Minister Modi?
One of the main reasons for improving train safety was the removal of thousands of unsupervised railway crossings, which the Modi government says was achieved in 2019. The relatively low-level engineering work to build underpasses and lay more signal drivers also drastically reduced accidents
Mr. Modi has made it a priority to improve infrastructure, especially transport systems, across the country. In recent years, railways, among the most visible projects for ordinary citizens, have received attention for a series of high-tech initiatives. Mr Modi has been inaugurating medium-range electric trains and is building a Japanese-style “bullet train” corridor on the west coast to connect Mumbai with Ahmedabad.
However, on Saturday, instead of inaugurating a new train as planned, Modi visited the site of the train crash.
The train system, and especially train accidents, have long affected the fortunes of India’s politicians. The cabinet post of railway minister has been one of the most sought-after posts because it is high-profile and influential in business and industry. Suresh Prabhu, credited with designing New Delhi’s world-class metro system, was forced to resign from his post in September 2017 after a series of accidents.
Within hours of the disaster on Friday, some opposition politicians were already calling for Mr Vaishnaw’s resignation.
Mujib Masal contributed reporting.