Odisha Train Accident: How NDRF Personnel Were Traumatised & Left Hallucinating

Bhubaneswar: Disasters like the triple-train accident in Odisha’s Balasore district can shake up even hardened professionals.

National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel, who were engaged day and night with other teams in the rescue and relief operation following Friday evening’s horrific rail disaster at Bahanaga Bazar, were left traumatised.

NDRF director general Atul Karwal, sharing the plight of rescuers’ mental health, described how one of them hallucinated that he was seeing blood everywhere while another lost his appetite as they saw dead bodies, severed body parts and victims suffering from excruciating pain.

“I recently met the rescuers engaged in rescue operation in the Balasore train accident… Someone told me he hallucinated that he was seeing blood every time he saw water. Another person said he lost the urge to eat after this rescue operation,” Karwal told PTI.

Nine NDRF teams, which were deployed at the accident site in Bahanaga Bazar, rescued 44 injured passengers and retrieved 121 bodies from the spot, as per official data.

In what was one of the most disastrous rail mishaps in India, 288 people were killed and over 1,000 injured.

Karwal, who was addressing the inaugural session of the ‘Annual Conference on Capacity Building for Disaster Response-2023’ in New Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan, spoke about the measures taken to safeguard mental health of the rescuers following such accidents.

“The teams need to be mentally and physically fit… hence there are multiple mental health and physical fitness programmes carried out for this purpose. Counselling sessions are conducted to ensure good mental health of the rescuers,” he said.

Similar programmes were conducted after NDRF rescuers returned from their mission following the devastating earthquake in Turkey four months ago.

Karwal informed that NDRF was in the process of hiring a permanent counsellor to avoid hiring their services on a temporary basis.