Railway’s opens first ‘Disaster Management Institute and Safety Village’.

Indian Railways have come up with a ground breaking plan for mitigating railway disasters. A Railway Disaster Management Village is coming up on the out skirts of Bengaluru for this. Real time simulation of railway accidents will be conducted. This is expected to provide hands on, practical training for disaster management. In future coaches might catch fire and trains might fall into the river. Do not fear. This is only in the village for training and learning.

Information reported points towards the use of over aged rolling stock for replication real time accident scenarios. This will be useful in proactive rescue operations and improvement on existing efforts. Taking an idea from security personal, it will be like conducting mock drills. Theoretical know how will be clubbed with practical expertise. A real environment for various conditions and scenarios of accidents will be a college. Ironically, the village is named Safety Village.

The safety village has an already ear marked site at Hejjala, It is on the outskirts of Bengaluru with a population of 3,483 people. The project will cost a total of Rs. 44.42 crore.

Agenda for training:

1. Training on rescue, medical relief etc.
2. Rolling stock restoration techniques in class room setting.
3. Use of simulated teaching aids.
4. Practical reproduction of accidents on site.
5. Extraneous variable such as over head obstructions, platforms etc included.

Specials:

1. Underwater rescue
2. Relief operations.
3. Actual use of water body. Railways has undertaken construction of the water body for express purpose of simulation.
4. Useful application of over aged rolling stock that is lying wasted. Example – coaches, wagons, locomotives.
5. Use of virtual reality for understanding how accidents happen and after math.

The project is already underway. Construction and project completion follows a time line of end of 2018. A great move by Indian Railways in mitigating accidents. So many deaths are attributed to rail accidents every year.