From the Chhath Puja Tragedy, Tales of Heroism and Advice to Avoid A Repeat

Prashant Ravi/BiharphotoPeople standing on the bamboo bridge, in Patna, Bihar, during Chhath Puja celebrations, on Nov. 19. The bridge later collapsed causing a stampede.

A stampede during the Chhath Puja, or sun god prayer, on the Adalatganj Ganga riverbank in Patna claimed more than a dozen lives, mostly children, earlier this month, and left many injured.

The four-day Chhath Puja is the biggest religious ceremony in Bihar and in parts of neighboring Uttar Pradesh. During the puja, people, especially women, fast and offer prayer to the rising and setting sun wh ile standing in the holy waters of the river Ganga. Every year, tens of thousands of people congregate at many banks along the river at dusk and dawn for the puja, and every year the state government promises beforehand that the pilgrims will be safe.

Interviews with devotees and observers of the puja this year show how many lives were lost, after the collapse of a makeshift bamboo bridge was followed by hours of chaos at the site, both on the roads and in the nearby hospital. Unexpectedly, interviews show, many more deaths were prevented, as complete strangers rushed to help each other and rescue children from harm's way.

Crucially, the government response was slow: Police officers in the area were busy at another riverbank where the chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, had come to make his rounds, many witnesses said.

Below, attendees tell their stories from the tragedy and offer suggestions for how to avoid others like it i n the future:

Prashant Ravi/BiharphotoVinod Kumar Giri, right, and Shyam Chaitnaya.

Shyam Chaitnya and Vinod Kumar Giri:

Shyam Chaitnya, 32, and Vinod Kumar Giri, 35, were staying in neighboring rooms at the nearby Adalatganj Ghat and observing Chhath pilgrims from their rooftop. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were returning after offering their evening prayer from the riverbank on the evening of November 19.

All of a sudden they heard a commotion in the narrow lane below. Children were crying and they saw people falling over each other.

“It was a mad rush of hordes of people, and immediately we realized it was a stampede,” said Shy am Chaitnya, a government employee.

Even before they came outside, people had broken the iron grill on a road-front window in their building and were throwing small children inside for their safety.

The two men broke open a locked door, reached the broken window and started pulling small children inside the room, they said. In no time, it was packed with asphyxiating women and children, and people were coming in from all sides. They say there were hundreds of women and children in a room that measured about 2.5 by 3 meters, or 8 by 10 feet.

“It was horrible to see little children gasping for breath and losing it right before our eyes. Despite all our best efforts, at least three children died,” Mr. Giri said.

Still, the two kept pulling people inside the room through the broken window, then taking them out through the main door of the room. They provided water and took the injured to a nearby government hospital.

A power outage that happened during the stampede made the situation worse, they said. The incident happened at 6 p.m., and the rescue operation continued until 11 p.m., they said. It wasn't until police officers, volunteers and officials reached the area, at about 8 p.m. that the situation started to calm down.

The two men estimate they pulled more than two dozen small children and many women out of harm's way. The broken doors and windows where they were staying are still wide open, to tell the terrible tale.

They suggested the government could prevent such human tragedies by taking adequate security measures like deploying more police officers, widening the approach roads to puja sites and avoiding makeshift bamboo bridges. There should be no visits by V.I.P.'s on high-traffic puja days, they said, so the police can be on hand for other duties.

Prashant Ravi/BiharphotoJayant Kant, the superintendent of police, Patna city, Bihar.

Jayant Kant, Patna superintendent of police:

When the stampede took place, Jayant Kant was the only senior police officer to reach the scene immediately. Eyewitnesses said he could be seen rushing from the accident site to the hospital and then back to the site, instructing his subordinates while pacifying doctors and the agitated crowd.

The young officer, who joined the Indian Police Service in 2009, said that controlling the crowds outside the hospitals became a serious problem because doctors were hard to find.

“When I reached the government Patna Medical College and Hospital, I saw people coming in with suffocating children and women but I couldn't find the doctors there, ” he said.

Mr. Kant said he called doctors to come in to the hospital, while making arrangements to send many patients to different private hospitals. Injured children were ferried in police jeeps to private hospitals for immediate medical help, he said.

But outside the P.M.C.H., agitated crowds were turning violent because doctors were not available in sufficient numbers. Mr. Kant jumped into the hostile crowd and pacified them.

“It was very tough to calm down the gathered mob in a violent mood at that moment,” he said. “I don't know how I managed to calm them down.”

Then he rushed to the accident site at Adalatganj Ghat because there was a power outage and the lack of light was making rescue attempts difficult. He made temporary arrangements for lights, and while he was doing that got a call that protesting crowds had started throwing stones and ransacking the hospital wards. He rushed back to the P.M.C.H.

“I found some outsiders h ad mingled in the crowd, provoking them to indulge in violence,” he said. A mild charge using lathis, a kind of bamboo stick that police officers commonly carry, dispersed the troublemakers, he said.

Eyewitnesses also saw Mr. Kant carrying an unconscious child from one ward to another in the hospital, looking for doctors and instructing his subordinates to take the injured to private hospitals in their police vehicles.

Mr. Kant said he eventually earned the support of the crowds, and he estimates that more than two dozen children were rescued by the timely medical support and help provided by the police. “It's been the biggest reward of my life that I could save so many little lives,” he said.

Accidents like this could be avoided by taking certain measures, he said. Like what? “It will come out in the inquiry report,” he said. The state home secretary has launched an investigation into the incident.

Prashant Ravi/BiharphotoSayantanee Choudhury, a journalist based in Patna, Bihar.

Sayantanee Choudhury, journalist:

Sayantanee Choudhury is a reporter with the local edition of the newspaper The Times of India. She carried more than a dozen children to the hospital on her scooter.

When the accident happened, she was doing reporting for a “color story” on the Chhath Puja with her colleague Parul Pandey, driving to different ghats, or river banks where Hindu devotees typically bathe and offer prayers.

When they reached Adalatganj Ghat in the evening, they saw a pell-mell crowd out on the road screaming for help. “I found a 12-year-old, Poonam Kumari, crying on the roa d. I took her to the local police station and shocked to see about half dozen other children crying for their parents there,” Ms. Choudhury said.

“I requested the police officials not to hand over the children to anyone claiming to be their parents unless their identity is proved,” she said. “I found some strange people loitering around to take the children in their custody.”

She left the police station for the hospital and found 2-year-old Shruti lying unconscious on the hospital floor. She picked up Shruti, put her in her lap and began looking for the children's ward on the vast hospital campus, she said, driving from ward to ward.

When she finally reached the children's ward, she said, “the doctors told me to go to emergency ward and from there again I was told to go to children's ward. There was complete lack of coordination between medical staff at that moment of crisis and that was the worst part of the accident.”

“The doctors we re there, but appeared terrified of the agitating crowd outside which was swelling, fast and furious,” Ms. Choudhury said.

She and Ms. Pandey took several lost children to the police station and many to the hospital for treatment.

It was a horrible sight to see small children lying dead on the floor of the hospital, she said. “I carried two dead children in my own hands and took them to the emergency ward, hoping they could be saved, but they were declared dead,” she said. “I couldn't hold myself at that moment, but soon I gathered courage and rushed with another lost child to the police station.”

She estimates she reunited at least seven children with their parents, including Poonam Kumari.

Sometimes she and Ms. Pandey flashed their press cards to put pressure on doctors and police officers to provide immediate medical help to the injured or lost children.

“We put pressure on the policemen to take children in their jeeps from one wa rd to another,” she said. “It was a total chaos-like situation and when the agitating crowd started pelting stones at the hospital, we got terrified as stones were narrowly missing us.”

Ms. Choudhury continued shuttling between the local police station and the hospital until midnight, when officials finally brought the situation under control.

“There must be a mobile and better medical facility at the ghat and the hospital on such occasions,” she said.

“Better deployment of local volunteers and police personnel at the river, too,” could also help prevent these events, she said.