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‘Seeing blood every time…’: NDRF personnel traumatised after Odisha train crash
As many as nine teams of NDRF were deployed for rescue operations in the crash that killed 288 people and injured nearly 1,000.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams engaged in the rescue operation in the triple train crash in Odisha's Balasore district were traumatised, hallucinating and even lost their appetite after what they saw at the accident spot in one of the worst railway disasters in the country in three decades.
Sharing the plight of the rescuers and the impact of the incident on their mental health, NDRF director general Atul Karwal described how one of the rescuers hallucinated that he was seeing blood while another lost his appetite as they witnessed several deaths and victims suffering from excruciating pain.
“I recently met the rescuers engaged in the rescue operation in the Balasore train accident... Someone told me he hallucinated that he was seeing blood every time he saw water. Another personnel said he lost the urge to eat after this rescue operation," Karwal was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
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As many as nine teams of NDRF were deployed for rescue operations in the crash that killed 288 people and injured over 1,000. The specialised force rescued 44 victims and retrieved 121 bodies from the spot, as per the official data.
Karwal was addressing an inaugural session at the one-day 'Annual Conference on Capacity Building for Disaster Response-2023' in New Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan on Tuesday.
The director also spoke about the measures that are taken to safeguard the mental health of the rescuers in the wake of such accidents.
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“The teams need to be mentally and physically fit…hence there are multiple mental health and physical fitness programmes carried out for this purpose. Counselling sessions are conducted to ensure good mental health of the rescuers," he said.
Karwal also mentioned that similar programmes were conducted after the rescuers returned from the operation following the devastating Turkey earthquake in February.
The NDRF was also in the process of hiring a permanent counsellor in its ranks rather than hiring their services on a temporary basis, he added.
The train accident in Balasore involved two passenger trains Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, and a freight train near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, derailing and damaging as many as 21 coaches, trapping hundreds of passengers.
As per the latest data, of the 288 killed in the accident, 205 have been identified and the bodies sent back to their families while efforts are being made to find the families of the remaining 83 as Odisha hospitals race against time to preserve the bodies.
