BENGALURU: To check the safety preparedness of its staff, Namma Metro carried out a mock drill session near Vijayanagar Metro station on Monday night. However, it caused anxious moments among a few, with some assuming two Metro trains had collided with each other.
One train with nearly 100 Metro staff on board taking the place of passengers to duplicate a real situation was halted midway near Vijayanagar station. Vijayanagar is on Reach-2 of Metro on the newly inaugurated Mysuru Road-Magadi Road section.
One Metro train was made to stop midway and another Metro train was brought close to it and it was made to drag the stopped train away along with it. It was misunderstood to be a collision by onlookers. Namma Metro Operations Manager B L Yashvant Chavan told Express, “This is a mock drill we conduct twice a month. Since this is a newly inaugurated stretch, we decided to assess the safety preparedness of our staff to handle emergencies.”
These drills are generally done only very late at night after Metro shuts down for the day, beyond 10 pm. “Since Metro had already announced reduced timings on Reach-2 (from 9 am to 7 pm only) from December 11 to December 20, we conducted our mock drills a bit earlier in the day,” he said. “We also conduct another big mock drill once a year which is a disaster management assessment test jointly with fire personnel, police and other government agencies,” added Chavan.
U A Vasant Rao, Chief Public Relations Officer, said in a message, “BMRCL does such mock drills periodically.”