IT TOOK a team of 500 railway officials and contract labourers, working for close to 14 hours at a stretch, to ensure that trains are back on tracks after a part of the G K Gokhale road overbridge collapsed on to the tracks on Tuesday morning. As the eight rail tracks at Andheri lay disrupted, with six buried under debris, rescue operations were initially hindered by heavy rain and lack of access to large machinery. Santosh Yadav, constable with the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), first walked atop the debris pile, cautiously evading dangling overhead cables, to look for survivors. He then started picking up large boulders and handing them over to a colleague to throw by the sides of the track. “For three to four hours, we were not sure if pedestrians were trapped. Sniffer dogs could not smell as it was raining heavily. It was only before noon, when the rain stopped, that the dogs gave the clearance that there were no humans trapped. Until then, we were manually lifting the debris,” said Mahesh Nalavade, NDRF deputy commander. Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) and the NDRF manually lifted boulders, used hammer and deployed brick cutting machines to cut through the debris. Five pedestrians were rescued by 8.45 am and transferred to Dr R N Cooper hospital. “Five teams from the disaster rescue force, municipal corporation, fire brigade and security forces, including the police, divided the tasks to ensure work is done at a faster pace. If only the debris had to be cleared, we could have finished faster. However, the debris had broken the overhead equipment (OHE) mast and six wires, which made it difficult to restore operations,” a senior railway official said. By noon, a wall on western side of Andheri station was broken to make way for five excavators to come on the tracks and two cranes were deployed on the Gokhale flyover to lift boulders. About 40 from NDRF and 500 from Western Railways (WR), including contractual labourers, were deployed to clear the debris spanning 60 to 70 m across the tracks. Of the eight railway lines, only two tracks of harbour line remained unaffected by the collapsed bridge, except for damage to overhead cables. After the JCBs and machines were finally brought onto the tracks, the harbor line was cleared at 2 pm. Prabhat Rahangdale, MFB chief fire officer, said huge columns and high tension wires made the task of navigating through the debris difficult. “Electric current in these cables remained our major concern. It slowed the process initially.” The road overbridge collapsed suspending dozens of purple, yellow, orange, red and blue cables. According to eyewitness Haji Ahmed Inamdar, not only did the overhead cables snap, electric cables passing along the bridge also crashed with the collapse. By afternoon, with the help of seven tower cars generally used for overhead wiring maintenance, WR officials started repairing contact and catenary wires that provide power for trains. “The contact wire is at 5.5 metres height. We have to ensure it runs parallel and is connected at correct joints with catenary wiring,” a WR official said. The overbridge stood at a height of over six to seven metres from the tracks. An official said they are concerned if the collapse has damaged the tracks. “Only after the debris are cleared would we will be able to gauge the damage.” “There is a list of tasks that we require to do even after debris are removed. Some of the important tasks include checking for the ballast level (rocks) on the tracks, fixing their clamps, running the tower wagon to check for the OHE wires and then running trains at a slower speed to check if it is okay,” a senior railway official said. The Railways would repair the fallen part of the platform cover shade by Wednesday.
