Title - Rail safety under spotlight

You are here: Home » Sunday Spotlight » Rail safety under spotlight Rail safety under spotlight M R Venkatesh, Aug 5, 2012 Without augmenting and modernising infrastructure, such disasters are waiting to happen After the First Death, there is no other,” mused a modern poet. Never before in recent years has this insight so painfully sunk in as it did for bereaving relatives and friends of the 32 persons killed in a deadly fire at Nellore last Monday in the ‘S-11’ coach of the New Delhi-Chennai Tamil Nadu Express. In hospitals, 26 other passengers are struggling to recover from a combination of burn injuries – ranging from 5 per cent to over 30 per cent, and carbon monoxide-induced inhalation problems that could directly affect their lungs, victims of one of the worst train disasters for the Indian Railways (IR).Whether it be the haunting, macabre images of the charred 28 bodies recovered from the terribly gutted coach, its twisted remains or the tremulous memory snaps of the critically injured on ventilators, this accident cannot be reduced to just another piece of cold statistic.For the IR, this is a deep self-reflexive hour, with the searchlight having been turned intensely on its safety systems, procedures - individual, systemic et all, and the larger work-ecology required to reasonably ensure them.

And this is the ‘core issue’ the heartburns at Nellore directly lead us collectively to ponder upon. The grim mood at ‘ground zero’, which is otherwise a bustling district headquarters in agriculturally robust south coastal Andhra Pradesh, was perhaps ominously presaged by none other than the ‘High Level Safety Review Committee (HLSRC)’, constituted by the Railway Ministry, which submitted its report to the UPA-II Government recently.

A quick look at the staggering numbers reveals that the IR, as mentioned in the report submitted in February 2012 to the former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, on an average handles about 20 million passengers daily, and 2.45 million tons of freight. It runs about 11,000 passenger trains a day, including its brand-worthy ‘Rajdhanis’ and ‘Shatabdis’.

So much so, without augmenting and substantially modernising its infrastructure, including tracking and signal systems, such disasters in the IR are proverbially waiting to happen. This big picture has been drawn by none other than the HLSRC itself, headed by the former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Anil Kakodkar.

Just flavour the tone and tenor of some of the report’s outlandishly candid observations and suggestions, which warned against introducing so many passenger trains on existing overloaded infrastructure. “This has strained the infrastructure way beyond the limit and all the safety margins have been eaten up, pushing Indian Railways to a regime of adhocism in infrastructure maintenance,” the HLSRC asserted and urged no new trains “without commensurate inputs to infrastructure.” 

Juxtapose the report's hard findings with this gruesome rail mishap at Nellore, some of the complex strands of the rope get a little clearer. “Within 20 minutes of being informed of the fire, I was there at the spot and two fire engines were already there on their job,” recalled the Nellore District Collector, B Sreedhar. The fire had been noticed by the gateman at the level crossing just after Nellore station around 0420 am that fateful day, who first alerted the station master.  

Sreedhar, in emphasizing how quickly they not only put out the fire, but also detached the ill-fated compartment, stopped the fire from spreading to other bogies and retrieved the 28 dead bodies from the burnt coach and ensured medical treatment to the victims, was driving home that the district administration- the first crucial link in any Disaster Management/Response logistics- was not found wanting.

This, yet raised larger issues of whether the fire was already simmering inside the S-11 coach before sparks flew out, what caused it and related questions. “The district administration’s role is limited. These are issues the Railways will have to come out with the full facts in the Statutory Enquiry ordered,” the Collector reasoned.

While an electrical short-circuit in the coach is widely believed to be the trigger, several Railway officials, who deposed before the Commissioner for Railway Safety (CRS), D K Singh, over a two-day enquiry from August 2 at Nellore, confided to this correspondent that a mere short-circuit could not cause such a devastating fire.

“A short-circuit at best breaks power supply to other parts of the coach, but this fire seems to be much more than that,” said an exasperated senior officer of the Electrical Engineering Department from Northern Railway in Delhi, the point of origin for this prestigious superfast train. Other feedback from passengers spoke of a “plastic can found inside the coach”, said a station master close to Nellore.

There have also been feedbacks that “conflagration in S-11 coach was short-lived, but intense”, alluding to the possibility of some other inflammable substance inside the coach that could have aggravated the fire’s intensity and spread.

Access safety to trains at various boarding points and en route, particularly long-distance routes, and ways to “check” materials carried by passengers, have thus acquired an urgent dimension. This is notwithstanding the fact that “such fires in our trains are very rare occurrences,” said another railway official of Chennai, from where too officers were summoned for the CRS enquiry.

Glaring violations

In a huge country with lakhs of people travelling by rail every day, “it is not practically possible” to keep a tab on all the luggage though big railway stations have metal-frame detectors, said another railway staff. Yet, the Kakodkar panel has found the present precautions taken against fire hazards in trains to be far from adequate, amid glaring instances of using LPG cylinders in Pantry cars despite its use being banned on trains.The panel wants the Railways to massively implement a “Flame Detection System” in coaches, as fire alarms based on ‘smoke detection’ have been unsuccessful. The coaches should have “hooters” at many places to warn passengers.

The present design of the coaches itself is unsuited for fast, long-formation trains and Railways need to massively invest in modern anti-climbing coaches to enhance safety, recommended the panel and estimated a total funds infusion of a staggering order of Rs 1,00,000 crore over five years.All these not only needs lot more money and political will to push reforms, but an attitudinal change in users too in favour of greater vigilance and negating the narcistic tendencies to have all home facilities on a moving train. Or else, every rail tragedy may at best stop with a touching ode to the dead. 

When small was big!

The quiet road, lined by shady trees, leading to the Railway Officers Rest House at Nellore, where the Commissioner for Railway Safety (CRS), D K Singh, held a two-day statutory inquiry into the Tamil Nadu Express fire tragedy, could well be a page from any of R K Narayan’s memorable novels set in Malgudi.

As D K Singh played the jury for two days from August 2, among the first to catch the public eye was D Srinivas, the gateman in ‘khaki’ at the Vijayamahal gate crossing, a stone’s throw from Nellore railway station, who first alerted the station master about the fire. He appeared before the panel unruffled, his deep eyes exuding a human feel for the value of life that night watchmen know better.

Soon, scores of similar humble ground-level staff, including points-men between Bitragunta-Nellore section, lined up to testify, followed by the ubiquitous station masters, travelling ticket examiners, fire fighters et al, who have to burn the midnight lamp day after day. In the normal course, they hardly catch the media’s fancy, but before the panel were ‘Truth-Speaking Heroes’ to help it unravel the mystery behind how ‘S-11 coach’ turned a killer smoke-chamber.