Did Delhi Metro compromise safety of stranded passengers?

Update: 2012-08-02 01:16 GMT
A day after power grid failure crippled Delhi, bringing to halt all operations of Delhi Metro and leading to about 1,400 of its passengers getting stranded near the Patel Chowk station, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has alleged that Delhi Metro did not take full precautions to ensure the safety of these passengers. According to the DDMA, when these 1,400 passengers were trapped inside a metro train, the Metro authorities took over an hour to communicate the situation to it.

At 1.02 pm on Tuesday, the grid failed, leading to the stranding of these passengers, who were eventually evacuated safely at 2.15 pm by a DDMA team.

On Wednesday, the DDMA asked the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to state in writing why the protocol of informing the disaster management authority was not followed when a disaster-like situation indeed occurred on Tuesday. Talking to Millennium Post, the DDMA official Vijay Dev said, 'We are simply asking why the DMRC has not given information to us regarding thousands of passengers trapped inside a tunnel. The situation was not so dangerous, but it could have been worse also.'

At a debriefing meeting on Wednesday to review the major metro mock drill, which was held on last Saturday, the army also observed that there was no proper crowd management system at some stations. There was no equipment available with the DMRC for debris removal. No ramps are installed in some stations for evacuating the differently-abled people and there was lack of coordination with the hospitals. Also, the first-aid kits contained improper and inadequate medicines.
 
'We didn't received any information from the DMRC. We called them around 1.20 pm but they said that did not need help. Although, we alerted our officials and our teams were deployed across 11 station as soon as we received information about the crisis caused by power failure,' said Kuldeep Singh Gangar, special secretary, DDMA.

However, the DMRC spokesperson Anuj Dayal said,'We didn't contact the DDMA for the rescue operations. The DMRC personnel evacuated the trains and the stations in the hour of the crisis.'

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