Balasore: Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday visited the triple train mishap site in Odisha’s Balasore district and said the focus now is on rescue operation and providing best medical treatment to the injured persons.
While the whole focus now is to carry out necessary rescue operations and providing treatment of the injured, the restoration work will start immediately after we get the necessary clearance from the district administration.
Describing the accident as tragic, Vaishnaw said, “Our prayers are with the families of those who lost their loved ones.”
The Minister said several agencies, including NDRF, are engaged in rescue operations and mobilisation has been made from different sectors to ensure that maximum effort is put into the rescue operation.
Vaishnaw said steps have been taken to provide best medical treatment to those injured in the train mishap in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar or Kolkata.
Stating that the Railways has already announced ex-gratia and compensation to the affected, he said a high-level committee has been constituted to conduct an inquiry. The Railway Commissioner has also been asked to conduct an independent inquiry into the mishap.
The main objective is to ascertain the cause of the accident including technical and other aspects, the Railway Minister said, adding that the exact reason will be ascertained after a thorough probe is over.
The Railways Minister, who visited the accident site and also inspected the mangled bogies of the trains, was criticised by some people on Twitter for moving under under the damaged coach without any safety gears.
According to Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena, there had been around 238 deaths while over 900 are injured. “We expect to find more bodies. Our focus now is to rescue as many people as possible and seven national and four state disaster teams are engaged in the operation,” he said.
Preliminary information released by the Railways indicate that the Coromandel Express derailed after colliding with a static goods train. The Yeshwantpur-Howrah Superfast Express running on the parallel track crashed into the Coromandel Express and derailed.
Around 10 of 23 coaches, including two of general class, five of sleeper class (S1 to S5) and two of AC class (B4, B5), of Coromandel Express have been severely damaged in the collision. Two general coaches of Yashwantpur-Howrah Express also overturned, said sources in South Eastern Railway.
