VISAKHAPATNAM: The helpline set up at the Visakhapatnam railway station following the significant train accident in Odisha has been flooded with enquiries since Friday midnight. Personnel manning the helpdesk said they attended about 5,000 manual and phone enquiries in 12 hours. Two calls were received per minute on average. Most of the calls and enquiries were related to train services. About 15 trains were cancelled and some more were diverted. Refund is being given to advanced booking passengers, willing to cancel their journey. As a special case, cancellation of tickets is allowed at any railway station.
Messages have been sent to relatives or contact persons of passengers of the ill-fated trains, they said. Passengers of cancelled trains who want to continue their journey, have been accommodated in trains running on diverted routes. A control room for train accident victims was opened at the collectorate with phone numbers 0891-2590100/2590102. District Collector A Mallikharjun appealed to the kin of missing passengers to provide information about them. He said they would render necessary assistance for them.
Three passengers who were injured in the train accident in Odisha arrived here by train on Saturday evening. They include a couple. The injured were admitted to the emergency ward at Seven Hills Hospital. They were travelling in a B5 coach with seat numbers 27 and 29 of the ill-fated train. While Mini suffered a head injury, her spouse sustained a spine injury. DMHO P Jagadeeswara Rao supervised the admission of the two injured passengers in hospital.
Sankara Rao, a physically challenged railway employee, suffered a minor injury in the accident, and he was shifted to King George Hospital. Sankara Rao said he boarded the train and seated in the coach reserved for the physically challenged. He said the coach was next to the engine and he felt a jolt when the train got derailed at Bahanaga railway station in Balasore district of Odisha.
Sankara Rao said he was going to Vijayawada and boarded the train at Kharagpur. He said it took him 20 minutes to come near to the door of the coach. Local people further helped him to come out of the coach. “There was a pile of bodies lying across the track and in the vicinity,” he said and added that it was a very tragic and heart-rending scene.