It was on a rainy Friday 13 years back that Kerala witnessed its worst rail tragedywhen the Perumon train accident claimed 105 lives in July 1988.
The similarities between today's Kadalundi rail accident and the Perumon tragedy are striking. Both occurred on a rainyFriday. In both cases, bogies plunged into the water when the train was passing over a bridge at the height of monsoon.
If the train involved in Perumon, near Kollam town, was the Island Express fromBangalore to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, the train that went off the bridge at Kadalundi wasproceeding from Mangalore to Chennai.
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In the Perumon tragedy, 11 bogies went off the bridge and four of them were submerged fully in the water withthe rest dangling from the bridge. A railway probe had fixed the cause of the accident as tornado striking thetrain while it was passing over the expanse of the Ashtamudi lake between Sasthamkotta andKollam stations.
In Perumon, as in Kadalundi now, it was the local people who immediately swung into action before theofficials got to the site.
The Chennai-bound train derailed when it was crossing the bridge over the river atParappanangadi at around 1700 hrs.
While two coaches fell into the river, two were dangling from the bridge, the sources said. The bogies included onesleeper coach, a ladies compartment and a brake-van.
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Rescue work by railway and police teams assisted by locals was hampered by rains lashing the area.
Railway minister Nitish Kumar accompanied by railway board chairman Ashok Kumar leftNew Delhi for the accident site. Kerala chief minister A.K.Antony also rushed to thespot.
