Heated tyre led to monorail fire
The official added that a technical fault in the rake released a spark, which came in contact with the tyre, causing the fire.
Mumbai: Burning of tyres led to the monorail rake catching fire, says the report submitted by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS), regarding the November 9 incident, where two coaches of a monorail rake (train) had caught fire. A senior MMRDA official stated that the train was in operation overnight for the testing of Monorail phase 2, which caused the tyre to heat up. The official added that a technical fault in the rake released a spark, which came in contact with the tyre, causing the fire. “There was a spark in the rake due to technical reasons. Also, the tyre had heated up, which caused the fire,” said a senior MMRDA official on a condition of anonymity.
MMRDA has a total of five rakes in possession, which are operational for monorail Phase 1 (Chembur-Wadala). The authorities had used a few rakes from these five for completing the test run of the monorail phase II (Wadala-Jacob circle). “The rake was continuously in operation before the incident for an entire night,” said the official. The authorities are pitching to begin the phase II by year-end, a project that has been delayed for the past five years.
The monorail rakes have been procured from Scomi Engineering, Malaysian firm, are fire resistant and have the feature to restrain fire for a period of 30 minutes. According to MMRDA, the fire that occurred in the rake stationed at Mysore Colony station on November 9 lasted for about 20-25 minutes. According to reports, in 2015, a monorail coach in Malaysia caught fire due to similar reasons as mentioned in the CRS report.
However, the authorities stated that this is not the final report and the main report will come out in another eight days. “The interim report is out, but the main report will come in after eight days,” said UPS Madan, Metropolitan Commissioner.
The monorail was made operational in 2014 is used by 19,000 commuters daily, and the authority receives a ticketing revenue of Rs 5 lakh per day. The MMRDA is losing out on this revenue from the past ten days owing to a big loss.