TIRUCHY: With a first-aid kit hanging on one side of his two-wheeler, and an audio system on the other comes D Srinivasa Prasad, zooming out of Golden Rock Railway workshop in Ponmalai. A little session on fire and traffic safety, and making use of the first-aid kit whenever needed; that is how the 59-year-old railway technical employee spends his lunch break.
A lot like Rome’s Vigiles, Prasad has been serving the public as a watchman of fire and traffic safety issues for 24 years now.
Sharing on what prompted him to start his journey, Prasad said, “I joined the workshop in 1985. In 1986, as a Railway Scout service member I went to Allahabad to volunteer for Kumbh Mela.
There was a huge fire accident that year and nearly 200 people sustained injuries in the mishap. The incident haunted me for years, after which I started finding ways to prevent such tragedies. Hence, I took the initiative of raising awareness.”
The railway employee has provided first aid services to around 8,000 accident victims until now.
But do you know what is more interesting? First-aid kits came into existence because of railway employees. It so happened that, sometime probably in the spring of 1888, a concerned railway surgeon had explained about the lack of medical supplies for the railroad construction workers to a businessman, who was quick enough to conceive the idea of packing some medical supplies in a box until more comprehensive help reached the workers.
The businessman here is one of the founders of Johnson and Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson.
Initially people made fun of Prasad and told him that no one would pay attention to an ordinary railway employee.
However, Prasad carried on with his mission. “I am not an expert on safety measures. I learnt about fire safety from Indian Railways, and am trying to share that knowledge with the public with a hope that it would help someone.
People may continue making fun of me but I will keep on helping others,” Prasad told TNIE. All these years, Prasad also utilised his time learning various South Indian languages and Hindi. At present, the Fire Force and the Police use his assistance for making announcements in various languages during major festivals. “I can fluently speak Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam and English.
I learned the languages so that I will be able to conduct awareness programmes in different places. I have received many awards for my work, but more than those awards what matters to me is public safety,” he said. The man has a long-term plan set for his awareness programmes. He is planning to dedicate more time after his retirement. “I will retire in February 2022.
After that, I would conduct more of these programmes. I have conducted a programme in Goa and Hyderabad using a hand mike. I hope that I will be able to continue such initiatives in more places after my retirement,” he added. Not only first aid, fire and traffic safety concern Prasad. When the whole country was locked and Covid-19 started spreading its tentacles, he played awareness audio messages on the measures to contain the spread of the virus.
The journey of the first-aid kit
1 In 6 A.D. after a disastrous fire in Rome, Emperor Caesar Augustus established the first organized fire brigade known as the Vigiles. The Corp of Vigiles consisted of ex-slaves who were trained in firefighting; they also served as watchmen of the city during the night
2 First aid box was invented in 1888, when Robert Wood Johnson was on his much-needed vacation, travelling out west, he started a conversation with a fellow passenger on the train: the chief surgeon of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. As many as 12,000 railroad workers and operators died each year and medical care on the frontier was virtually nonexistent. Working on steam locomotives was so dangerous that trains began carrying surgeons, and later, medical cars for treatment