Andhra Pradesh Train Accident News Live Updates
His first reaction was to run to the crash scene where it was all dark after the train collided.Passengers were crying in pain, said Prasad, who was among the first group of local respondents. The group used the flashlights of their mobiles, entered the mangled coaches and rescued the passengers.
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“I along with my friends rushed to the accident spot around 7.30pm. We entered one of the mangled coaches and tried to rescue the passengers. But all I could get was a body soaked in blood with some of the passengers in the mangled coach suffering with severe injuries. My clothes were soaked in blood,” he said.
Prasad said they managed to take out at least four bodies from the coaches and managed to rescue at least 20 passengers despite the hurdles.
Prasad’s friends R Naidu and G Satish, all native of Bheemali, said they used flashlights and entered the coaches and pulled out survivors. We didn’t waste any time in rescuing people, and shifted the survivors to the nearest road point from the accident spot on our bikes and later they were shifted to hospital in ambulances, they added.
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They said by the time the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams arrived, they had rescued more than 30 people, some of whom had suffered severe injuries.
“Initially, we suspect that the collision of two trains in Vizianagaram district is much like the ghastly train disaster in Odisha’s Balasore. Without a second thought, we rushed to the spot in auto-rickshaws with our husband, brothers, and cousins. We have only flashlights and we don’t have other equipment. We hoped to find more survivors in the coaches and dared to enter the coaches and managed to pull out some women survivors from the coaches, said Singampalli Suradamma,” a house-wife and native of Bheemali.
Even before we reached the spot, the locals, including some women, worked hard despite the pitch-dark conditions. The locals shifted some of the survivors to nearby hospitals even before the ambulances reached, said R Krishna Rao, a constable with Andhra Pradesh SDRF. Fortunately, the death toll in the incident is very low when compared to the Odisha’s Balasor train accident, he added.
Apart from local respondents, teams of NDRF, AP SDRF and Police, Fire Service and others worked for hours to pull out survivors and retrieve the bodies from the trains.
The locals also supplied water, snacks and food to some of the rescue teams on Monday.