Railway accidents

Citation

(1999), "Railway accidents", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308eac.006

Railway accidents

Railway accidents

31 August 1998 - Ajmer District, India

A passenger train rammed into a van at an unmanned railway crossing in Rajasthan state in western India today, killing 19 people and injuring eight, officials said. A police spokesman in the state capital, Jaipur, said the accident took place in Ajmer district, nearly 220 km south of Jaipur.

25 September 1998 - Nalgonda, Andhra Pradesh State, India

Twenty-five people, including 16 children, were killed and 25 were seriously injured when a railway engine struck a bus in southern India today, the United News of India (UNI) said. UNI said the accident happened at an unmanned level crossing near Bothalapalem village in Andhra Pradesh state's Nalgonda district. The injured were taken to hospital at Miryalaguda, it said.

19 October 1998 - Kafr El-Douar, Egypt

Egyptian officials sought today to pin down the cause of a train crash that killed at least 45 people and injured 100 in this northern town. "We are waiting for a technical committee to check the situation and decide the reason for the accident," Transport and Communications Minister Soleiman Metwalli said at the scene. Asked about reports that the train's brakes had failed, he said: "This will be confirmed after the investigation." The „Interior Ministry updated the casualty figures from a toll of 43 dead and 90 injured given earlier in the day. Kafr El-Douar hospital director Mohammed Naamatallah said 46 people had died. The train, with non-paying passengers perched on the engine roof or clinging to the coaches, had been travelling from Alexandria towards Kafr El-Sheikh. Railway officials said it had left the main track for a siding in Kafr El-Douar town square to let the Alexandria-Cairo express pass through, but failed to stop before the buffers. Mahmoud Marei, head of the Railway Authority, told state television some of the people on the roof might have interfered with an air-tap connected to the braking system. An official of Buheira governorate, Mohammed Arafa, said the train had developed an unspecified fault and had been told to stop on a local line at Kafr el-Douar. "The train was supposed to follow signs to go at certain speeds and it did not do that. Instead it continued its speed and the train's automatic controls recorded a speed of 80 km per hour" he said. The driver was among the dead. The train crashed into at least seven small shops which were selling fish, meat and fruit to townspeople in the bustling square as children made their way home from school. The middle coach had jack-knifed, smashing into a stone monument engraved with the names of the town's sons killed in Egypt's 1973 war with Israel. The lead coach lay tilted on its side in a swamp of oily waste littered with tattered clothing.

27 October 1998 - Khabarovsk, Russia

Three runaway train cars, carrying concrete panels and other construction materials, yesterday collided with a bus at a railway crossing in Khabarovsk, about 3,800 miles south-east of Moscow in the Russian Far East, killing 22 people and injuring 26, news reports said. The bus was torn apart by the impact.

26 November 1998 - Punjab, India

At least 108 people were killed when a passenger train rammed into another train in the northern Indian state of Punjab earlier today. Officials said about 150 people were injured in the crash, many of them seriously. The accident took place when the Ambala-bound Sealdah Express rammed into derailed coaches of the Amritsar-bound Frontier Golden Mail coming from Delhi at about 03.35 (22.05, UTC, yesterday) near Kauri village. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar said a coupling between two coaches of the Frontier Mail had broken, derailing the train. Two minutes later the Sealdah Express crashed into it. Villagers were the first to reach the accident site. Witnesses said limbs of victims hung from carriages and rescue workers struggled to pull bodies out of the tangled wreckage. Kumar said 73 bodies had been extricated from the mangled coaches and another 35 bodies were being pulled out. "There are still some passengers in the coaches, some may be injured, some may be dead," said Punjab director general of police P.C. Dogra. The Press Trust of India news agency said the railways authority had ordered an enquiry into the accident.

27 November 1998 - The death toll from yesterday's train crash in northern India has risen to 154 and officials said the figure could climb. "More bodies are trapped in one of the bogies and the number of deaths may rise," a police official said today. Police also said more than 150 people had been injured in the collision, some of them in serious or critical condition. The crash happened early yesterday morning when the Ambala-bound Sealdah Express rammed into derailed coaches of the Frontier Golden Mail. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar said a coupling between two coaches of the Frontier Mail had broken, derailing the train. Two minutes later, the Sealdah Express crashed into the carriages.

28 November 1998 - The death toll has risen to 201, a senior railway official was quoted today as saying. "The search of the debris would continue for some more time as we do not want to leave a single limb," the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted R.S. Grover as saying. He said the body of the assistant driver of one of the trains was recovered from the cabin of the mangled diesel engine. Grover said 122 bodies have been handed over to the relatives of the victims. Of the 201 bodies recovered, 54 were women and 17 children. Police had yesterday put the death toll at 154 but said they expected it to rise.

3 December 1998 - Jalgaon, India

An Indian passenger train skidded off the rails today, killing at least eight people and injuring 19 others in the western state of Maharashtra, a railway official said. The accident happened near Jalgaon, about 400km north-west of the financial capital of Mumbai, he said. "As of now we know of eight dead but there is some confusion and the death toll could be more," the spokesman for the region's Central Railway network said. "Of those injured nine are in a serious condition," he said. Authorities have launched investigations to find out why the train, travelling from Mumbai to the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, went off the rails.

29 December 1998 - Dhanbad, India

A Press report, dated 26 December, states: A train rammed into a bus that was crossing railroad tracks in eastern India today, killing 12 people and injuring six others, domestic news agencies reported. Railway officials said impatient bus passengers, who had been waiting for an "all clear" signal at the crossing, snatched the keys from the guard and forcibly opened the gate to pass through. While the bus was crossing the tracks, a freight train came at full speed and crashed into the bus. All the victims were coal miners who were on their way to work in the bus. The accident occurred near Dhanbad in eastern Bihar state, about 660 miles south-east of New Delhi.