India: Three-Train Collision Kills Over 280, Injures 800

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Facts

  • At least 288 travelers were killed, and more than 800 were injured in a three-train collision in the eastern Indian state of Odisha on Friday.1
  • Though the cause of the accident is unclear, local media said a high-speed passenger train first hit a nearby stationary freight train and then derailed onto the adjacent track before it was struck by another train coming from the opposite direction.2
  • According to state chief secretary Pradeep Jena, more than 115 ambulances and 45 mobile health units aided nearly 1.2K rescuers in trying to pull the survivors from the mangled carriages and damaged tracks.3
  • Rescue efforts reportedly concluded Saturday, with officials saying that all trapped passengers had been recovered. According to the Railway Ministry, work to rebuild the train tracks has begun.2
  • While a high-level probe into the derailment has been ordered, the railway ministry has announced a compensation of ₹1M ($12K) to the kin of the deceased, ₹200K ($2.4K) to the grievously wounded, and ₹50K ($600) to passengers who sustained minor injuries.4
  • India's deadliest and the world's second-biggest rail accident was in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train plunged off a bridge into a river in the country's eastern state of Bihar, killing an estimated 800 people.5

Sources: 1NDTV.com, 2BBC News, 3Associated Press, 4Reuters, and 5The Economic Times.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by CNN. Friday's accident, unfortunately, highlights India's worrying railway safety record. In 2021, more than 16K people were killed in nearly 18K railway accidents across the country, mainly from collisions between trains. Countless lives will be lost if PM Narendra Modi's administration continues to launch high-speed trains instead of addressing the issues of aging infrastructure, poor traffic management systems, and overworked loco pilots.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Business India.
  • Despite facing a plethora of problems, India's railway network is moving towards modernization, including the face-lifting of over 200 railway stations and the construction of 100K km of new railway tracks over the next 20 years. While the cause of Friday's crash hasn't been ascertained yet, Indian authorities are moving quickly in their investigation and search and rescue, which, for now, is rightly prioritizing victims and their families.