Coordinating a Catastrophe or catastrophic coordination: the Kakenge Rail accident.
On Wednesday night, at about 11pm a cargo train was derailed about 170 miles away from here. The train was travelling on the Illebo to Kananga stretch of the colonial rail link, constructed to convey copper and other ores to Kinshasa from Katanga. In any other country a cargo train derailing would not really be newsworthy. However, Congo being the way it is, the train was carrying more than 100 clandestine passengers. The death toll after 5 days is in the region of 90 with 130 casualties. The road linking the crash site to Kananga is a dirt track, so treacherous that it takes a day to make the journey.
The next day the Provincial Inspector, the head of the ministry of health in the province, came to my office for a meeting to discuss the response to the accident. It seemed, hours after the accident, the best response would be to equip the Ministry of Health with sufficient surgical materials, anaesthetics and antibiotics to respond to at least 200 injured people. We also proposed logistical support to the MoH to med evac. the injured, however finally the UN offered a helicopter reducing an 8 hour road trip to 40 minutes. The Provincial inspector departed in the helicopter with a team of nurses and surgeons.
The next day the UN called for a meeting of international agencies to coordinate the response. The meeting took place almost 48 hours after the accident, reports coming in that the injured were being transported by bicycle to nearby hospitals, and that many of them were succombing to their wounds.
The next day a high level delegation of ministers - representatives of President Kabila - members of the UN, BBC, Reuters, photographers and entourage descended on sleepy little Kananga to visit the crash site.
In a typically Congolese chaos most of the delegation discovered on arrival that they were not going to travel to the crash, since with only 18 seats on a UN chopper, at least 50 impeccably dressed Kinois were left behind to sample the delights of Kananga. Three days after the event the UN and NGO community had collected meds for the crash victims: about 400kgs of drugs ranging from ORS to Atesunate, entirely inappropriate meds. As they loaded these huge quantities into the chopper we cynically estimated the delay time before these drugs, (which had no delivery notes, or packing lists) would appear for sale in the pharmacies of Kananga.
Seeing a chaotically organised disaster response was heartbreaking, with NGOs and UN and government all trying to play a lead role... Hearing a UN representative explain that the helicopters could not be used to med evac the remaining crash survivors as they were reserved for the visiting VIPs.
What makes it worth even commenting on this incident? Trains derail, busses crash, choppers go down in some place on the globe almost every day. I guess it has disgusted me for two reasons: first of all there are train accidents all over but rarely in such inaccessible places and rarely in places where there is no infrastructure to respond. The train accident amplifies the predicament of the Congo: criminal neglect and dilapidation of a country that once functioned as a country. Secondly I write about it because I am nauseated by the inadequacy and inappropriateness in the response of the authorities: a lack of unity of international players and then the arrival of the Kinshasa circus (a huge expense to the UN who provided helicopters, and two passenger planes). Of course I am glad that the crash made CNN, but I felt such deep cynicism at the barrage of domestic and international journalists flying into the most marginalised province of the country for a horror story of the crash and the blood-on-the-tracks photographs.
In a country experiencing excess mortality of 10,000 people per week as an indirect consequence of the internal armed conflict, 89 deaths in a train accident seems like a tiny blip. Is my heart becoming too hardened toward humanity ?
The next day the Provincial Inspector, the head of the ministry of health in the province, came to my office for a meeting to discuss the response to the accident. It seemed, hours after the accident, the best response would be to equip the Ministry of Health with sufficient surgical materials, anaesthetics and antibiotics to respond to at least 200 injured people. We also proposed logistical support to the MoH to med evac. the injured, however finally the UN offered a helicopter reducing an 8 hour road trip to 40 minutes. The Provincial inspector departed in the helicopter with a team of nurses and surgeons.
The next day the UN called for a meeting of international agencies to coordinate the response. The meeting took place almost 48 hours after the accident, reports coming in that the injured were being transported by bicycle to nearby hospitals, and that many of them were succombing to their wounds.
The next day a high level delegation of ministers - representatives of President Kabila - members of the UN, BBC, Reuters, photographers and entourage descended on sleepy little Kananga to visit the crash site.
In a typically Congolese chaos most of the delegation discovered on arrival that they were not going to travel to the crash, since with only 18 seats on a UN chopper, at least 50 impeccably dressed Kinois were left behind to sample the delights of Kananga. Three days after the event the UN and NGO community had collected meds for the crash victims: about 400kgs of drugs ranging from ORS to Atesunate, entirely inappropriate meds. As they loaded these huge quantities into the chopper we cynically estimated the delay time before these drugs, (which had no delivery notes, or packing lists) would appear for sale in the pharmacies of Kananga.
Seeing a chaotically organised disaster response was heartbreaking, with NGOs and UN and government all trying to play a lead role... Hearing a UN representative explain that the helicopters could not be used to med evac the remaining crash survivors as they were reserved for the visiting VIPs.
What makes it worth even commenting on this incident? Trains derail, busses crash, choppers go down in some place on the globe almost every day. I guess it has disgusted me for two reasons: first of all there are train accidents all over but rarely in such inaccessible places and rarely in places where there is no infrastructure to respond. The train accident amplifies the predicament of the Congo: criminal neglect and dilapidation of a country that once functioned as a country. Secondly I write about it because I am nauseated by the inadequacy and inappropriateness in the response of the authorities: a lack of unity of international players and then the arrival of the Kinshasa circus (a huge expense to the UN who provided helicopters, and two passenger planes). Of course I am glad that the crash made CNN, but I felt such deep cynicism at the barrage of domestic and international journalists flying into the most marginalised province of the country for a horror story of the crash and the blood-on-the-tracks photographs.
In a country experiencing excess mortality of 10,000 people per week as an indirect consequence of the internal armed conflict, 89 deaths in a train accident seems like a tiny blip. Is my heart becoming too hardened toward humanity ?
posted by Gabriello Princip at 7:28 AM
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