Backwardness or Incompetence
"We could hear people crying and screaming for help."
"I thought we would die. The next car was on fire. We felt so helpless."
Chaudhry Shujaat, passenger, Pakistani train
"Two stoves blew up when people were cooking breakfast."
"The presence of kerosene with the passengers in the moving train further spread the fire."
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistani Minister for Railways
"There was no railway staff or anyone to help."
"Even the train emergency chain, meant to stop it, was not working. This incident occurred because of the railways' own negligence and they are blaming the Tablighi Jamaat [Sunni Muslim missionary movement] people for cooking and causing all this, which is wrong, no one was doing that."
Train Passenger
 |
| Getty Images |
A horrific scene took place as a fire swept through a train in Pakistan, resulting in 73 deaths, and 40 injured passengers following an explosion of a gas canister used by passengers to cook breakfast, according to an explanation given by the minister of railways. When passengers leaped in panic from the fire on the moving train, this accounted for many of the deaths.
Three of the train's carriages near the town of Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab province's south were destroyed. Many of the people on board had been travelling to a religious gathering, a conference organized by the Tablighi Jamaat Sunni Muslim missionary movement, according to officials. This tragedy only adds to Pakistan's disaster-and-accident-plagued railway system.
Passengers are aware of a prohibition against bringing stoves on board trains for the purpose of preparing meals when they face long journeys. According to the minister, right before the fire broke out, the train conductor had ordered passengers to refrain from cooking, but his order was ignored and they simply continued. This is a not-uncommon situation even on flights in rural areas where passengers are unsophisticated country people.
On the other hand, according to a number of survivors, they spurn the contention that the fire had been sparked by a cooking accident. The way they tell the situation as they experienced it, the cause was a short-circuit in the electrical system of the train. Fire and black smoke poured from the train's windows when it stopped on a stretch of line surrounded by fields.
"People were jumping off, some of them were on fire", one witness reported. The train kept moving even as the fire was raging, another survivor reported to the media. Victims were charred beyond recognition, Jameel Ahmad, deputy commissioner of the district reported. "We'll have to carry out DNA tests."
Labels: Pakistan, Train Tragedy
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 02, 2019
<< Home