Three train accidents, 69 flight disruptions and power failure in four states on the first fog of the season
The first day of the dreaded North Indian fog exposed all claims of safety and preparedness. It led to three train accidents, disrupted air traffic and power breakdown as the northern grid tripped. The fog reduced visibility to as low as 50 metres in Delhi this morning.
Trains collide
Ten people were killed and 39 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in three trains accidents in Uttar Pradesh due to the dense fog and near zero-visibility early today. Ten people died when the Bhiwani-Gorakhpur Gorakhdham Express rammed into the Allahabad-bound Prayagraj Express at the Panki railway station near Kanpur. While the brake van of the Prayagraj Express derailed, killing the guard, the engine of the Gorakhdham Express was damaged.
The Delhi-Sitamarhi (Bihar) Licchavi Express rammed into the stationary Magadh Express at Sarai Bhopat near Etawah at around 8:00 AM. The driver of Licchavi Express was seriously injured as the engine of the train ploughed into the Delhi-Islampur (Bihar) Magadh Express in foggy conditions.
In the third accident, Sarju Express rammed into a tractor-trolley at an unmanned railway crossing in Pratapgarh near Allahabad. The tractor driver escaped unhurt. “A committee headed by the commissioner of railway safety will enquire into the accidents,” said a spokesperson of the Indian Railways.
Flights disrupted
In spite of the tall claims of preparedness to operate even under dense fog, air traffic in Delhi was badly disrupted – the schedule of as many as 69 flights were affected. Twenty-three flights were cancelled and 18 flights, including one domestic, were diverted to Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.
No flight could take off or land between 2.00 am and 10.30 am when runway visibility dropped to 100 metres and general visibility to less than 50 metres.
Although two runways at the airport are equipped with CAT-III B landing system, which operates even when the visibility is as low as 50 metres, they could not operate due to a glitch in cables connected to the landing system.
“Although weather conditions permitted CAT-III B operations, these could not be undertaken due to non availability of runway visual range measurements from one station out of three on both the runways. It is measured at the start, mid-point and end of each runway. The equipment is operated and maintained by the meteorological department,” said a release from Delhi International Airport Ltd which operates the Delhi airport.
Flight operations resumed at 10:20 am only when the visibility exceeded 300 metres.
The airport operated 159 flights in the low visibility range — 126 were in CAT-I and 33 in CAT-II. No aircraft could land in CAT-III A and CAT-III B systems due to the cable fault.
“Delhi International Airport is facilitating the urgent restoration of the meteorological equipment to ensure runway visual range data is available at all times,” the release added.
Power trips
There was a blackout in parts of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Jammu & Kashmir as the northern grid tripped in the wee hours of Saturday morning following a technical problem in the transmission lines triggered by the fog and cold conditions.
According to experts, tripping of power transmission lines occurs when heavy fog mixes with pollutants in the air and settles on the ceramic insulators along the lines. It needs to be cleaned at intervals. Powergrid Corporation of India, the country’s largest power transmission utility, deploys anti-fog disc insulators along its transmission network in order to avoid such crisis. However, no such exercise has been carried out by the Punjab government.
