Hundreds Killed, Hundreds Injured In India Train Crash 

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

NEW DELHI (Worthy News) – At least 233 people were killed and about 900 injured Friday in a multiple train collision in India’s eastern state of Odisha, officials said.

Rescue operations were underway overnight, with many trapped in the wreckage in Balasore district, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the state capital Bhubaneswar, footage showed.

Odisha’s Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena told the media that two passenger trains and a goods train were involved in India’s worst train disaster this century.

The tragedy occurred when the Coromandel Express, which runs from Kolkata to Chennai, collided with another passenger train, the Howrah Superfast Express, railway officials said Friday.

The Howrah Superfast Express derailed and became entangled with the Coromandel Express, South Eastern Railway authorities explained in a statement.

Amitabh Sharma, executive director of the Indian Railways, added that a parked goods train was also hit. He said two passenger trains “had an active involvement in the accident” while “the third train, a goods train, which was parked at the site, also got (involved) in the accident.”

Reporters visiting the scene saw smashed train compartments torn open with blood-stained holes of twisted metal.

OVERTURNED CARRIAGES 

Carriages “had flipped over entirely,” and rescue workers searched to pull out survivors trapped in the mangled wreckage, with scores of bodies seen nearby, witnesses said.

One man who survived the tragedy recalled that “10 to 15 people fell on me when the accident happened, and everything went haywire. I was at the bottom of the pile.”

He and many others faced trauma. “I got hurt in my hand and also the back of my neck. When I came out of the train bogie, I saw someone had lost their hand, someone had lost their leg, while someone’s face was distorted,” the unidentified survivor told Indian media.

Indian President Droupadi Murmu said on social media platform Twitter that he was “Deeply anguished to know about the loss of lives in an unfortunate rail accident in Balasore, Odisha.”

He added: “My heart goes out to the bereaved families. I pray for the success of rescue operations and quick recovery of the injured.”

The tragedy overshadowed plans for a ceremony to inaugurate the Goa-Mumbai Vande Bharat Express at Madgaon station in India’s west-central Goa state, which was seen as another milestone in India’s railway network.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been scheduled to flag off the train through a video link on Saturday morning, while Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was to be at Madgaon station for the ceremony.

SAFETY ISSUES 

But instead, Vaishnaw headed for the accident site in Odisha, and the ceremony was canceled, officials told India’s World is One News (WION) network.

The crash comes at a time of pressure on the government to improve safety.

Several hundred accidents occur yearly on India’s railways, which with 40,000 miles (64,000km) of track, is the world’s largest network under one management.

Most train crashes are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment. More than 12 million people travel on 14,000 trains a day across India.

Friday’s tragedy, the nation’s worst train crash this century, brought back memories of two trains colliding near the megacity of Delhi in August 1995, when 358 people died.

India’s worst (weather-related) train crash was in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train was blown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in Bihar state, killing at least 800 people.

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