SEALDAH DIVISION CONDUCTED MOCK DRILL FOR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS & DISASTER MANAGEMENT EXERCISE AT SODEPUR
Kolkata, August 28th 2025.
As a part of Railways’ relentless endeavour to assess preparedness and augment the ability of disaster management, Sealdah Division has conducted a full scale drill at Sodepur today (28.08.25).
As a part of the drill, it was reported that Train No. 00113 Sealdah – Lalgola passenger special, while passing Sodepur station, got derailed and passengers of two (2) General Class Chair Car coaches (ER 032612 & ER 032614) were affected 4 passengers died, 12 passengers grievously injured & 18 passengers sustained simple injury. Accident Relief Medical Van and Accident Relief Train were called for rescue operations. Self Propelled Accident Relief Medical Van/Beliaghata and Accident Relief Train/ Beliaghata proceeded to the site. 140 Ton crane, Accident Relief Train & Medical Van from Sealdah were also rushed to the accident site.
The team of Sealdah Division and National Disaster Relief Force jointly started the evacuation work and rescuing virtual passengers. In a joint operation, 30 nos. of virtual passengers were evacuated from the coaches and proper medical treatment was rendered. The seriously injured passengers were sent to Sealdah BR Singh Hospital.
In this mock drill exercise two basic things were stressed upon:-
a) How to remove and rescue passengers stranded at different places in coaches by cutting those with modern gadgets and
b) It was practiced with state of the art equipments such as high capacity cutter, separator, plasma cutting etc.
The joint exercise was started at 03:30 hrs. It was declared as Mock Drill at 18:00 hrs to ease off the situation and the drill was declared complete after total restoration.
In this joint mock drill, Rescue Team of about 38 nos. of NDRF personnel, Divisional Disaster Rescue Team, 20 nos. of Civil Defence & 07 Fire Brigade staff participated. Apart, 08 doctors, 20 paramedical staff, 28 from St. John’s Association, 26 from Scouts & Guides and 53 RPF contingents took active participation in the rescue operations.
The drill was conducted under the inspiring leadership of Shri Rajeev Saxena, DRM/Sealdah. Shri Sujit Kumar Sinha, Sr. DSO and other Divisional Officers actively participated in this mock drill.
The main objective of such mock drill was to assess accident alertness, emergency preparedness and to evaluate & adopt Standard Operating Procedure by both Railway and NDRF team.
