Of the 288 bodies recovered from the crash site, 205 have been identified.

New Delhi:

In November last year, railway tracks were restored after 24 days in a collision between two freight trains in the German capital Berlin and Hannover. It took five weeks to restore the track after two trains collided head-on in Cyprus. After the horrific train accident in Odisha's Balasore on Friday, it was not easy to repair the track and resume traffic on it. Given the dependence on trains in India, this work was likely to be delayed. This is the reason why Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had insisted on the restoration of the track only hours after the train tragedy in Balasore. The railway team did this work under great pressure.

There
were many works to be done for the restoration of the railway track. It had a long list. For example,
coaches had to be removed.
The bodies were taken out of the coaches and sent for postmortem.
The corpses had to be covered with white sheets on the side of the tracks.
- The tracks were cleared. They were repaired.
The overhead cable was broken, it had to be fixed.
The injured had to be shifted to hospitals in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata.
- Embaming was done to preserve the bodies which were not claimed.
- The track line had to be restored to resume train services.
Along with the necessary relief and rescue, VIP movement i.e. the tour of the leaders to the spot had to be managed.


About 3000 people worked continuously for 51 hours under the supervision of the War Room of the
Ministry of Railways. So that the track can be fixed in time. The dead bodies can be removed. The train can be run again on the track where the accident took place. According to government figures, 288 people lost their lives in this accident. More than 1100 people were injured. Now the biggest challenge before the railways is this. That is, the corpses that have not yet been identified; Keep them protected until someone claims them.

The emergency staff spent more than 48 hours since Saturday night doing tasks that were not comprehensive but required precision and sensitivity.

There were 50 teams of 70-8 people in the war room of the Railway Ministry. A DRM or a GM with a member of the Railway Board was given a charge of Rs 300 each to monitor at least three of them. There were 300 cameras in the war room of Delhi, which was to create a communication system. So that it can be known which team needs what on the site. Also, backup of manpower and essential items was to be ensured after every eight hours.

The chairman of the Railway Board, DG Health and a senior official were given charge of two hospitals and mortuary in Cuttack, which were at the centre of the tragedy. A special team of 70 people repaired the railway track and overhead electric wires, which were broken in the accident. At the same time, the task of a team was to shift 200 seriously injured people to special hospitals in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata.


Incidentally, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had served as the Collector of Balasore before joining politics. He has worked extensively in disaster management.

In 1999, when Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik was dealing with the loss of a super cyclone, his measures included ashwini Vaishnaw's efforts. About 10,000 people lost their lives in this super cyclone. It was only after this that the state government created the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force (ODRAF), the first agency of its kind in the country, from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). According to officials, his personal equation with Naveen Patnaik, who oversees Ashwini Vaishnaw's work, also helped fast-track the work.

Due to
these efforts, the track was restored after repairs two days after the train accident at Behanga Bazar station in Balasore district of Odisha. As far as restoration of tracks is concerned, the Railway Minister was very firm that the track should be repaired at the earliest so that there is no problem in the supply and movement of essential commodities.

Ashwini Vaishnav reached the spot within a few hours of the train accident. After this, he was engaged in rescue operations and track restoration work for three consecutive days. He said there should be no compromise on security and sensitivity. At the same time, PM Narendra Modi also visited the spot within a few hours of the train accident. Pm Modi was in touch with the Railway Minister and senior railway officials during the two-day rescue operation and restoration of the track.

The biggest challenge
before the Railway Ministry now is to preserve unidentified corpses and body parts. Until the claim is made, these bodies and pieces of some corpses will be preserved through embaming. Some of the corpses have been claimed by several families. In such a situation, DNA testing is also being done. Its samples have been taken. The report is awaited.

The Centre has specially sent a team of Delhi-based doctors from AIIMS, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital to Odisha to help in the process of embambulating corpses. Six container-sized freezers have been channelised to hold at least 200 bodies. The Odisha government on Monday released a 168-page online document for identification of unidentified bodies. It also had pictures of the dead as well as a list of people undergoing treatment in hospitals.

Many passengers travelling in the Coromandel Express did not have a reservation. Therefore, it is difficult to extract their details. In such a situation, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Telecom Minister have started exploring new ways to identify the corpses.

"We used AI devices, SIM card details, some telecom ministry devices and mainly SIM records to identify people. The bodies were rotting... The fingerprints for using Aadhaar were clearly not coming... The facial recognition option helped to some extent. With this, we actually reached out to 64 families and also facilitated them travel."

"The railways has also directed its officials in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar to reach out to the families for identification of the bodies. The Centre is making arrangements for their travel. Ambulances have been arranged to carry the bodies. We have told them that if possible, take a flight, the government will bear the cost."

Officials said rescue operations were slow as two coaches of the train were crushed under the impact of the accident. The Coromandel Express was carrying all the load of the goods train. "A thorough search was carried out in the passenger coaches so that no body was left stranded. Some corpses may also be trapped in the broken steel parts of the coach. In such accidents, body parts get stuck in the part of the train, it is a very difficult task to separate them. So we needed not only medical professionals, but also intelligence support from the states."


Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik have also visited the accident site.

It was a multi-state campaign coordinated by the Centre. Within hours of the train accident, odisha disaster rapid action force (ODRAF), Odisha fire services and NDRF personnel started rescue operations. The West Bengal government set up a 24x7 control room to monitor relief operations. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also visited Balasore and Cuttack to reassure patients from Bengal. He also thanked the doctors and nurses in the hospitals for their exemplary service in times of crisis. Most of the unidentified bodies killed in the accident are said to be from West Bengal. Two top ministers, Women and Child Development Minister Dr Shashi Panja and Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, visited Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Bengal government officials were seen co-operating with the Odisha administration to make the process as smooth as possible.

The Odisha government has provided free transport facility for the patients of Balasore train accident, who are returning home after being discharged from the hospital. The Tamil Nadu government has made arrangements to ensure the return of stranded and injured passengers. A high-level delegation, including ministers Udhayanidhi Stalin and Sivasankar, along with officials, has been sent to Balasore to oversee rescue and relief operations.


Railway officials especially lauded the measures taken by the Andhra Pradesh government to identify its passengers, adding that the state used both technical devices and ground support to identify people from the state injured or dead in the accident.

IT Minister G Amarnath said, "We formed a committee immediately after the meeting with CM Jagan Reddy. There were three IPS officers in it. We first got the reservation chart to find out who the passengers were by the next morning, and we looked at the 309 passengers who boarded the Coromandel. There were 34 passengers from Andhra Pradesh to Howrah. So we had a list of a total of 342 passengers. We asked the district administration to contact the families of the passengers. Around 58 people are yet to be identified," he said.

The Andhra Pradesh government has kept 50 ambulances here in Odisha to help shift the injured to hospitals, he said. "We deployed revenue officials and police in Srikakulam, a district bordering Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. With the help of Telugu-speaking people here, we can get all the details about the casualties and other injured."


Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw returned to Delhi from Balasore on Tuesday. Within hours, he held a high-level meeting in the Railway Ministry to fast-track the upgradation of safety systems in trains. There was a discussion about track management. Meanwhile, the CBI has started investigating the train accident.

Officials said the lessons they have learnt from the tragedy in Balasore will help them set SOPs in the future and deal with any railway-related crisis. So far, officials have said that of the 288 bodies recovered from the crash site, 205 have been identified. They have been handed over to their families.

(With inputs from Saurabh Gupta)

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