Road and rail

3.12, bridge collapse, fatalities

India: Thirty five people were killed when a 150-year-old bridge collapsed on an overcrowded super fast train in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district. Huge slabs of metal and cement fell on a sleeper class carriage of the Howrah-Jamalpur train coming from Howrah in West Bengal and on its way to Jamalpur in Bihar, barely 50 km from its destination. Many passengers, travelling illegally on the roof of the coaches and hanging on the doors, were crushed or seriously wounded. The bridge was being dismantled when it suddenly came down on the train. According to witnesses, a portion of the damaged bridge was hanging loosely but trains continued to run underneath, unaware of the danger lurking overhead. Reverberations from the plying of the train apparently caused the bridge to come apart.