India train fire kills scores, leaves passengers scrambling for only clear exit

An Indian fire official douses fire coming out from a coach of a passenger train at Nellore nearly 310 miles south of Hyderabad, India on July 30, 2012. / AP

Updated at 10:09 a.m. ET

(AP) HYDERABAD, India - A fire swept through a train car packed with sleeping passengers in southern India on Monday, killing at least 32 people and sending panicked survivors rushing for the only clear exit once the train stopped, officials said.

Investigators found charred remains of victims still in their sleeping berths and were struggling to identify them.

A railway station worker noticed the burning coach as the overnight train from New Delhi to the southeastern city of Chennai passed through the town of Nellore at about 4 a.m., local official B. Sridhar said. Nellore is about 310 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.

Once the alarm was raised, the train was stopped and the coach was detached from the rest of the train to prevent the blaze from spreading.

Passengers were evacuated once the train was halted.

"Since the fire had engulfed one door of the coach, people had to rush to the other end of the coach to exit," Sridhar said by telephone from the accident site.

A totally charred coach from inside is seen of a passenger train at Nellor nearly 310 miles south of Hyderabad, India on July 30, 2012.

/ AP

Passengers said the fire spread swiftly through the coach.

"We woke up suddenly when the train came to a halt. That's when we noticed the fire at one end of the coach and shouted out. People were still sleeping, but once they realized the danger they scrambled to the door," Shantanu, a passenger in the coach, told New Delhi Television.

He said it took passengers a few minutes to react and push their way through the narrow space between the berths.

"By the time we got out of the door, the coach was completely on fire," said Shantanu, who like many Indians uses only one name. He said firefighters sprayed water over the burning coach, but it was gutted.

Sridhar said the fire may have been caused by an electrical short circuit in the coach.

The blaze killed 32 people and nine others were missing, said K. Sambashivarao, a spokesman for the Indian railways. Earlier, a regional railway manager, Anil Kumar, had put the death toll at 47. He was not reachable Monday afternoon. At least 25 others were hospitalized with burns, officials said.

Railway and medical workers were trying to identify the dead, Sridhar, the local official, said.

"This is a very difficult task, since some of the bodies are charred beyond recognition," Sridhar said, adding that officials were making preliminary identifications based on the reservations chart from the train's records.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims.

India has one of the world's largest train networks, with more than 10,000 trains and 40,000 miles of track. Around 20 million people travel by train each day.

Meanwhile, 30 Hindu pilgrims were killed when two trucks collided in the northern Indian state of Haryana, police said.

Thirty-five others were injured in the head-on collision early Monday when the pilgrims were returning home from visiting a Hindu temple in nearby Rajasthan state, said police superintendent Karta Ram. Bhiwani is about 75 miles west of New Delhi.

[UForgotPoland]

This is what happens when you're country is extremely overpopulated, it's to the point where a simple pot hole in one of their roads also kills scores! India seriously needs to consider more aggressive forms of birth control or else their resources and country will be ravaged by overpopulation.

[ncglober]

This is not just poor people who suffered from this tragedy. This was a sleeper class train which is ridden by many middle and upper class families including those great engineers living in Silicon Valley. Yes, there is much abject poverty in India, but the train system is used by all.

[JeffreyBrewer]

This may be a little off topic....

To the writer of this article, just a note about symantics. In the title, the use of the word "scores" appears to be incorrect. A "score" is a quantitative numeric indicating 20 in the decimal system. Since you have used the plural, meaning more than one, I would have expected there to be at least 40 casualities, which FORTUNATLY is not the case.
I point this out as we should always be on guard against those who would add to the sensationalism of stories, thereby subtly converting what should be news into a vulgar form of entertainment.

[rogerwabbit]

I'm saddened to read about this tragedy. However, using sensational headlines helps nobody and undercuts credibility. "Scores" would indicate two or more scores killed. 32 dead would be approximately one and a half score.

[rogerwabbit]

I'm saddened to read about this tragedy. However, using sensational headlines helps nobody and undercuts credibility. "Scores" would indicate more than one score killed. 32 dead would be approximately one and a half score.

[mari1963]

So sad and unbelievable that this happened to so many people.

[elimba]

Around 2007, I visited India to attend an international conference in Puna. Later, I came to Mumbai which is about 2 hours bus drive from Puna. During my stay in Mumbai, I was appaled by the scenes of extreme poverty and backwardness of some facilities. Specially, I couldn't believe I was seeing trains people have to take to go in and out of downtown Mumbai. It was as if I was going two centuries back in time. Even in Africa, trains like these did not exist anymore. It is no wonder the accident described in this article happens and are likely to happen all the time. As the trains leave downtown and head towards other districts, the scenes of slums, alongside giants open air sewages where some people were cleaning themselves and their clothes was just unbearable to me. I just could not believe my eyes. How could human beings live in such abject poverty in the 21th century ? When I returned to my hotel room, I couldn't hold my tears. I prayed that God make a change for all these extremely poor people I have seen in the day.

On the other side of the country, my trip was a real joy when I discovered the many monuments and ruins of ancient India at Taj Mahal, Agra and Jaipur. Indians are resilient, lovely and hard working people who deserve a better life style from their government. The image of India I saw just didn't match my expectations. These are not the pictures of Bollywood, of flashy wedding full of gold and silk, of the home country of great engineers and scientists living in Silicon Valley. This is the real India divided between some extremely poor sections of the population living in abject poverty and the very rich others living in marble palaces. It is an India divided and unequal of the have-never-had and the have-always-had.