When a mistake is made, it’s usually no big deal. We correct it and move on, but when that mistake involved to trains in the same place and the same time, you can’t just correct it and move on. Lives are lost, and property is destroyed. There is no real fix for this. On January 4, 1990, two trains collided in Sangi, Pakistan, killing between 200 and 300 people and injuring an estimated 700 others. This was the worst rail accident to date in Pakistan.
The Zakaria Bahauddin train, named after a holy man in Pakistani tradition, could carry 1,400 passengers and regularly made the 500-mile trip between Multan and Karachi. On January 4th, however, with 16 cars in tow, it was making the overnight journey. Packed with 2,000 passengers, it was overcrowded by some 600 people…a situation which was not that uncommon in Pakistan back then.
As the train neared the village of Sangi in Sindh province, it was unexpectedly diverted onto a side track. Without the Zakaria’s knowledge, a 67-car freight train had been parked there overnight, and the Zakaria slammed into its rear at 35 miles per hour. The impact derailed the locomotive along with the first three passenger cars, leaving nearly everyone in those cars seriously injured or killed. Around 200 to 300 people lost their lives, and about 700 were treated at local hospitals. Some of the injured had to be airlifted to Karachi for urgent care. The train’s engineer survived and later revealed that an inattentive signalman had mistakenly directed the train onto a side track. The signalman was later jailed for manslaughter.
Pakistan’s rail network carries over 65 million passengers every year, yet accidents remain a tragic reality. The crash in Sangi was sadly not an isolated incident…less than a year and a half later, a similar disaster in Ghotki claimed more than 100 lives. It would seem to me that some training would be necessary for these signalmen, as well as anyone else involved with the movement of trains in the network. In addition, workers need to be more alert and far less careless. For the unfortunate victims of the Zakaria Bahauddin train, it’s all too little too late. Maybe with better training some of the future trainwrecks count be avoided.
Leave a Reply