More than 280 dead and hundreds injured after a train crash – GENTE Online

Early this Saturday, the rescue teams were able to assess the magnitude of the tragedy. Sudhanshu Sarangi, the Odisha fire chief, announced that the balance of fatalities was 288, but could increase to 380. “Rescue work is still ongoing,” he told AFP reporters from the scene of the tragedy.

On the other hand, Pradeep Jenachief secretary of the state of Odisha, confirmed that there are about 900 injured who were taken to hospitals following the incident, which took place some 200 kilometers from the state capital, Bhubaneswar.

The reasons for the tragic railway accident

The disaster was reportedly caused by the derailment of an express train which was en route from Bengaluru to Calcutta and fell on the adjacent track. It was then that minutes later, the Coromandal Express, en route from Calcutta to Chennai, collided with the rubble and some of its carriages too. collided with a freight train parked nearby.

“Inside the wagon, after the accident, I was trapped under a mountain of bodies. I would have between 10 and 15 people. Many of them were already dead. I managed to get out by crawling on the ground, while people were screaming. There was blood everywhere. I saw a man with a missing hand. To another a leg. And a woman had half of her face destroyed,” one of the survivors told the local press.

Due to the enormous number of people affected, the injured had to be transferred by ambulances and buses to any hospital that had available capacity. “We prepare all the big hospitalsboth public and private, from the accident site to the state capital to care for the injured,” said SK Panda, a spokesman for the Odisha authorities.

Unfortunately, rail accidents are common in India, as it has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world. Over the years, the country has experienced several such disasters, but the current tragedy is considered the deadliest since the 1990s.