'There was no one to start monorail's firefighting system'

MUMBAI: An

empty monorail train caught fire

at

Mysore Colony station

between

Chembur and Wadala

at 5am on Thursday .The blaze ripped through two coaches and burned them down to their

metal skeletons

by the time the fire brigade, which arrived 20 minutes later, was able to douse it in 40 minutes. Had the train been running during operating hours, the lives of 30 passengers could have been endangered, as on average there are 15 passengers per coach.Monorail services have been suspended till further notice.

An official said the driver hit the brakes after being alerted by the central control room, located at the Wadala depot, about smoke coming out from his coach. The call to the fire brigade was made by him. The train was going to Chembur from the Wadala depot to begin the first trip of the day. Monorail services run from 5.30am to 10pm on weekdays.

The monorail system, including trains and stations, is fire-compliant, which means the facilities are equipped with firefighting capabilities, said a fire brigade officer. “But no monorail staff was on the scene to use extinguishers and other equipment to fight the blaze. This led to a delayed response as firefighting operations started only after the arrival of the fire brigade,“ he said. Three fire engines were pressed into service after firefighters disconnected power supply to the train, track and station.

There were initial reports that the fire was due to a short-circuit caused by sudden braking, but this reason was dropped later. An official said the source of the smoke was the coolant chamber. The metropolitan commissioner, the executive head of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the monorail's owner, has ordered an inquiry by an independent committee to determine the cause of the fire, said the MMRDA's joint project director (PR), Dilip Kawathkar, in a statement. The panel will be headed by PS Baghel, a former commissioner of railway safety , western circle. An inspection of all six monorail trains in service has been ordered. The loss caused by the fire has been pegged at about Rs 2 crore, said an official.

Safety issues have dogged the system since monorail operations started in February 2014. Experts say the problems have been compounded because of losses suffered by the Rs 3,000-crore project because of poor passenger response. An expert said that this has meant that services are economized, straining rolling stock: only six rakes (trains) are pressed into service for 240 trips per day , leading to wear and tear.“Maximum services on minimum rakes are affecting the condition of the trains,“ said an expert.

The latest incident also shows that there has been no improvement in the monorail's relief and rescue protocol. On March 15, 2015, power failure led to a train getting stuck between the Bhakti Park and Mysore Colony stations, and it took the fire brigade four hours to bring passengers down to safety .

Monorail loses Rs 50cr per year

The monorail system incurs a loss of about Rs 15 lakh every day, which translates into an annual loss of well over Rs 50 crore. This is because the trains run below capacity.While the carrying capacity of one coach is 150 passengers, on average only 15 passengers are there on a coach per trip.Most services on the monorail's only route, Wadala-Chembur, run almost without passengers and it's only during the morning and evening peak hours that the trains get commuters. The MMRDA, which owns the system, has spent Rs 3,000 crore on the project and doesn't know when it will break even. An official said this would occur after the second phase starts, but then several deadlines have been missed.