BHUBANESWAR: After handling one of the deadliest train crashes in India, rescuers of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), specialised in disaster management, are experiencing nightmares and olfactory hallucination as they now deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A disaster that involved a high number of casualties, the highly-trained rescue personnel have been affected by the visceral nature of death they witnessed at the crash site at Bahanaga railway station after the June 2 mishap. A total of nine NDRF teams consisting of more than 300 personnel were engaged in one of the most difficult operations which lasted for about 48 hours.
Once the gruelling operation was over, NDRF 3rd Battalion requested the Mental Health Institute of SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack to send experts to conduct counselling of personnel who were deployed at Bahanaga. A three-member team led by Mental Health Institute’s clinical psychologist Dr Prasanta Kumar Sethi provided counselling to the rescuers in Mundali on Tuesday between 10 am and 5 pm.
“We carried out a severity assessment of the rescuers to ascertain their PTSD. Some of the rescuers complained of witnessing nightmares, while others revealed that they were experiencing flash images of the screaming passengers and the blood-stained bodies of the victims,” said Dr Sethi.
Some rescuers faced olfactory hallucination, which makes one detect smells that are really not there in the environment. A few others revealed they were not able to sleep during the night. The NDRF was among the agencies which carried out rescue and search operations at Bahanaga railway station. Its Balasore unit received information about the accident at about 7.30 pm. The team moved at 7.50 pm and reached the accident site 40 minutes later at 8.30 pm.
“We were expecting two to three bogies to have derailed. What we saw was a disaster we were not really anticipating,” recounted an NDRF rescuer. Director General of NDRF Atul Karwal shared the plight of the rescuers and the impact of the incident on their mental health. He described how one of the rescuers hallucinated that he was seeing blood while another lost his appetite as they witnessed deaths and victims suffering from excruciating pain.
The experts have advised rescuers to engage in breathing exercises, imagine the views they are fond of and provided them tips related to sleep hygiene. The rescuers are expected to get back in shape within two weeks, said Dr Sethi.
“As per the standard procedure, a counselling session is organised for the personnel engaged in strenuous operations. About 250 personnel engaged in the Bahanaga rescue operation attended the day-long counselling session in Mundali. The personnel posted in Balasore attended it via video-conferencing,” said an NDRF officer.
The first team of NDRF to reach Bahanaga from Balasore had 30 to 35 members and considering the gravity of the mishap they realised their numbers were simply not enough to carry out search and rescue operations of this magnitude. Soon more teams from NDRF 3rd Battalion in Mundali and a squad from Kolkata headed for Bahanaga.
NDRF, which had carried out about 55 mock drills with the railways in Chhattisgarh and Odisha last year, said it was one of the difficult operations as the accident claimed 288 lives and injured over 1,100.