A young man who was flung from a moving train this morning has lost his leg and required rapid transportation to an appropriate medical facility for life saving treatment.

The man was found by paramedics lying next to the train tracks on the gravel where he was being stabilised by the local Fire and Rescue Workers. ER24 paramedics took over his treatment and the Advanced Life Support paramedic stepped in. The man’s right leg had been ripped from its joint, almost at the hip, and it immediately appeared that there would be no chance of saving the limb.

The man, believed to be in his early 20′s, was alert throughout assessment and treatment. He needed extensive treatment and was airlifted to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital where trauma staff were awaiting his arrival.

The incident will need to be investigated by the necessary officials as at this stage it is not clear as to why the man fell from the moving train.

Negotiations to stop all train movements in the area were underway between paramedics and the railway company in order to provide a safe working environment to the paramedics and for the Medicopter to land.

Vanessa Jackson, ER24

Also view:

Level Crossings and Road Safety

A father is mourning the death of his little girl after she was knocked down and killed by a train near the Klaarwater train station just outside Pinetown this afternoon.

ER24 received the call and rushed to the scene where they were taken by the community to where the little girl was lying. Unfortunately there was nothing the paramedics could do to save her life as she had already succumbed to her fatal injuries from the accident.

It is believed that the little girl age between 2 and 3 was playing on the tracks with some friends when the train suddenly appeared. It is alleged that the girl tried to jump out of the way but was unable to do it in time.
SAPS and Metro Rail were on the scene and would investigate the circumstances of the child playing on the railway lines at the time of the incident.

Derrick Banks, ER24

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Level Crossings and Road Safety

According to bystanders who witnessed the incident, the woman in her 30′s was running to catch the train as it was pulling away from the platform. As she tried to get on the train she lost her footing and fell into the gap between the platform and the train. The train then allegedly dragged the woman a few meters before the driver at the other end was alerted to what had happened.

When paramedics arrived, the Florida Park Fire and Rescue workers were in the process of getting to the woman who was stuck underneath the train. Paramedics then squeezed into the small gap between the train and platform and assessed the woman’s injuries. The woman had sustained very serious injuries and she had already died at the scene.

There was nothing more that could be done for her and she was declared dead.

The incident will be investigated by the Florida SAP who were at the scene.

Vanessa Jackson, ER24

A 32 year old man has died in hospital after sustaining severe injuries following an alleged leap from a moving train earlier on Tuesday evening.

ER24 paramedics were called to a section of the railway approximately 3 kilometers from the Cato Ridge Railway Station toward the Mpumalanga Station after a man is suspected to have jumped from a moving train at around 9pm this evening. A train driver allegedly spotted the critically injured man and alerted officials who then called for the team of emergency medical care personnel to come to his aid.

The man had sustained critical head and chest injuries and was placed in the care of an Advanced Life Support Paramedic who provided necessary life saving treatment and stabilisation on scene. The man was taken to the waiting ambulance and needed continuous stabilisation of his life threatening injuries en route to Edendale Hospital.

Trauma staff took over his treatment and continued their efforts to stabilised him, but their battle ended with the man succumbing to his injuries and he died in hospital only hours after being brought in.

The circumstances surrounding the man’s reasons for jumping from the train are not known, but a police investigation will be conducted following the man’s death.

Vanessa Jackson, ER24

“Act safely at level crossings!”

International Level Crossing Awareness Day (ILCAD) on 9 June 2011

There is no doubt that the train is the safest form of land transportation. It is when the interfaces with other forms of transport are factored into the rail system that the operational risks increase, with the interface at level crossings being one of the greatest of those third party risks and not easy for the rail sector to control without support from others.

Level crossings are an inherently easy way for people to cross the railway and are completely safe if the rules are followed by those using them. It is these users neglecting traffic rules at level crossings that not only put themselves at risk but also people travelling or working on trains. It is statistically clear that most of the accidents that occur at level crossings are caused by road users and pedestrians mainly because of their misbehaviour.

That is why it is so important to highlight this issue and bring these risks to the attention of level crossing users and make them aware of the risks they run by not taking care. This is of course not a problem that can be uniquely addressed by the rail community, it has to be handled as one of shared concern amongst several players, including the road and rail sectors, police forces, road users and those with responsibility for licensing those users as well as with pedestrians including cyclists.

It is a general misconception that level crossings are a rail problem when in fact it has always been and remains very much an interface between two modes and each has its role to play.

It would be quite easy for those companies responsible for rail infrastructure and national safety authorities to simply engineer-out the problem by closing level crossings. This is of course not a realistic solution for a number of economic reasons.

As with any risk situation it is far better to get to the root of the problem and develop a campaign of education of the users and the partners on the other side of the interface so that people are learning to appreciate the risks and respecting the traffic rules. Changing the behavioural approach will decrease the number of accidents at level crossings.

It is as a significant contribution to this educational approach that ILCAD was born. The International Level Crossing Awareness Day on 9 June 2011 focuses on educational measures and the promotion of safe behaviour at and around level crossings.

It is built around a range of national events held jointly at various locations in every participating country; focussed on a common message of “Act safely at level crossings!” In addition to regular or permanent activities held throughout the year, many special communication actions have been planned throughout the world: flyers handed out at level crossings, in schools, driving schools, to scouts. Posters will be displayed in railway stations and other central places, the video “Just in time” (funded by the European Commission) will be shown on screens in railway stations and on the internet and there will be special messages broadcast on radio and television as well as at press conferences organised with national and local press.

Finally UIC/ILCAD have been granted the use of the logo of the UN-ECE global Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 as part of many other road safety initiatives using the motto: “Together we can save millions of lives”

DID YOU KNOW?

1. that according to article 18 of the UN-ECE Vienna Convention, rail has priority at the interface with road and that road users and pedestrians have to respect the road signage and stop when requested – regrettably this respect is not always present this rather too often causes accidents.
2. that trains can weigh several hundred tonnes and some in excess of 1000 tonnes and that the distance for a train to be able to stop can be as much as 10 times higher that for a car.
3. that apart from the obvious physical damage caused by a road vehicle crashing into a train at a level crossing, there are also psychological, social and financial consequences including, loss of a family member, post-traumatic effects on the train driver, train passengers, witnesses, victims not forgetting the system disruption and the train and road traffic delays…

You can find detailed information on good practices and educational material designed to highlight the issue of misbehaviour at and around level crossings by consulting the dedicated website www.ilcad.org

Also view:

Road Sfety and Level Crossings/ Rail Crossings

It is unclear as to how the collision occurred, but the ER24 emergency control centre received a call that two trains had collided between the Phomolong and Mzimhlophe stations in Orlando, Soweto.

When paramedics arrived at the scene they were astonished to see the hundreds of injured commuters lying beside the open carriages. After further investigation it was found that only three commuters sustained severe injuries in the collision. Two of the severely injured patients received on-scene treatment by another ambulance service before being airlifted to hospital in separate helicopters.

As more than 40 ambulances and multiple other rescue vehicles including Fire and Rescue services arrived at the scene, hundreds of patents received treatment before being transported to multiple hospitals in the surrounding areas.

The rescue efforts finally finished shortly before 22:30 this evening as the last patients were transported to hospital. ER24 would like to commend all the men and woman who contributed in the effort of providing Emergency Medical Care to the all effected in the train collision in Soweto this evening.

Andre Visser, ER24

Details of the incident remain unclear.

Western Cape Emergency Medical Services paramedics were called to the scene.

Spokesperson Keri Davids said the two boys were under the age of three.

This is the second incident in the past few months in which children have died on the province’s tracks.

The previous incident saw two young siblings killed by a train in Manenberg earlier this year.

(Story by Regan Thaw, Edited by Lisa Bartlett appeared on Eyewitness News)

Also view:

Level Crossings and Road Safety

The 4th International Seminar on Railway Safety and Security held on 21 and 22 April in Ifrane, Morocco was a great success, marked by the active and ample participation of delegates during work sessions and quality of questions raised during the debates held after each set of presentations.

The next major planned dates and outlook for high speed, safety and security were also recalled:

• Security related research projects: Protectrail information day in Paris at UIC HQ, on 4 May 2011;
• Plenary Committee and High Speed seminar in Prague on 18 and 19 May 2011;
• Preparation of the next Security Congress on technology in Rome on 22 and 23 September 2011;
• Annual High Speed Training Seminar;
• Security Platform Congress planned to be held in Slovakia in June or September 2012 ;
• The 8^th UIC World Congress on High Speed in Philadelphia from 11 to 13 July 2012.

(Paris, 13 April 2011) The 1st UIC World Congress on Rail Training was successfully held on 6-8 April 2011 at the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineering within the Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid – UPM). Some 170 delegates representing 34 countries from all continents attended this first UIC congress dedicated to rail training and educational issues, among them heads of railway human resources departments, railway training centres and academies, consultancies, universities, national rail safety agencies, regulatory authorities and railway manufacturers.

This first worldwide event on rail training was organised at the initiative of the UIC Expertise Development Platform – chaired by Alexander Netolicky from Austrian Federal Railways ÖBB – and sponsored by DB Training, CITEF, Funkwerk, Lloyd’s register and CETREN. The two and a half days’ congress featured a combination of plenary sessions, workshops and technical visits.

An exhibition supported by training providers and technology specialists was held in parallel. The congress offered an opportunity for delegates to explore examples of best practice in different areas, such as defining training needs, training methodologies, training design and delivery, assessment, skills fade and optimisation of competence retention.

The results of the comparative study on railway training provision for safety critical job positions in Europe which was commissioned from the University of Würzburg by the UIC European network of rail training centres was also presented and discussed.

Throughout the different presentations, workshops and discussions, the following topics were raised as fundamental issues that world rail training providers will have to tackle in the near future.

• The demographic challenge and the need to secure the next generation of rail transportation employees
• The need to define training needs, integrating non-technical skills in order to optimise learning
• The need for rail training providers to address the topic of measuring ROI (Return On Investment). Training is an investment which delivers measurable
benefits in relation to business performance, financial returns and workforce productivity, and its ROI can and should be calculated like any other
investment. The lack of systematic and empirical studies on transfer-of-training effects has a negative impact on the perception of training
• The loss of “corporate memory” in railway companies and the need to optimise competence retention, particularly in safety critical roles
• The importance of organisational learning
• The contradiction between the role of the trainer as a key player in the development of railway employees’ competences and skills (hence a safe and
interoperable railway) and the comparatively low recognition of the job and consequent difficulty in recruiting new, qualified trainers
• The need to invest in new training approaches (partly due to decreasing resources)

The success of the congress and the intensive exchanges between participants proved the value of organising opportunities for networking and promoting a regular professional dialogue among the rail training providers.

ER24 were notified by the local authorities of a man that had being found lying next to the railway lines and needed medical assistance. Once on scene, paramedics had to walk along the tracks to where the man was lying. The patient was assessed and found that he had suffered a head injury and a broken leg. The patient was given oxygen and fluids to help with the blood loss. His head and leg were stabilised before he was placed on a specialised board and carried to the waiting ambulance, which transported him to Edendale Hospital in a serious but stable condition.

It is believed the man was walking along the railway tracks and it’s unclear why the man never moved before the train came past but the local train authorities and SAPS were on the scene and would investigate the incident further.

Derrick Banks, ER24