BENGALURU: A historic effort to ensure more lives are saved when railway accidents take place is under way inside the sleepy Kanminike village, located 24 km from the city. Work is on round-the-clock on 60 acres in Hejjala, where the country’s first Disaster Management Training Institute and Safety Village is coming up.The `45-crore institute aims to simulate real accident scenarios so that employees will be equipped to quickly respond to real-life disasters on the tracks.
A pond with water up to 6.5-metre depth has already been readied, which is intended to represent a river and a tunnel. A rail track running to 2.5 km is being built and sleepers are being laid with iron rails to be laid on them shortly. A small railway station building of 50 sqmt is ready. A real panel board will be built inside. Signalling and electrification of the tracks will take place soon. Borewells are in place to tap in groundwater to ensure regular water supply to the future trainees here. Their numbers are set to run into lakhs as railway employees across the country will be sent here in batches to be trained to respond quickly to train disasters.
To ensure a memorable stay here for the trainees, a sports complex with badminton court, basket ball, lawn tennis and gymnasium as well as a yoga and meditation hall are being built presently. Two hostels, one for top officers and another for other employees, are in the final stages now. An idyllic setting is in sight with trains chugging off on the Bangalore-Mysore Line in the vicinity. The only section that has just not taken off is the Audio/Video Virtual Reality Centre planned on the first floor of the Administration Block. It aims to instruct employees by simulating dangerous situations and making them respond. A train with fewer coaches than a regular one and a loco pilot are expected to reach Hejjala once the railway track is in place to train staffers. Vital life-saving equipments like hydraulic rescuing devices and re-railing equipments are being purchased for `21 crore.
Deputy Director, Disaster Management Training Institute, Santhi Babu, who is entrusted with the task of seeing the work to fruition, is religiously going around the campus checking every aspect being done. “Work is going on 24x7 and all offices will be ready by November or December,” he promised.While the original plan was to have everything ready by the end of 2018, the Virtual Reality section is a non-starter yet.
A senior railway official told Express that the tendering process for it was being processed and exact requirements are being assessed. “It is a totally new thing for all. Very few in the country have any expertise in it. A couple of companies approached us, but they were more into gaming and other small virtual reality stuff. This is a really big, unprecedented attempt. We are looking at opening this section alone by March 2019.”
Chief Public Relations Officer of South Western Railway E Vijaya said, “The institute can be launched by December 2018. The Virtual Reality is only an add-on feature here. It can come up later.”