on August 10. Emergency services The line was blocked by wreckage, and the Gaisal emergency services were utterly overwhelmed, as fire swept through the ruined vehicles and station buildings, killing many of the injured people trapped in the trains. Many vehicles and aid support services had to undertake the 14-hour drive from Calcutta to reach the site, by which time many of those they could have helped were already dead. Those who were picked up by rescuers were taken to hospitals in Kishanganj and Islampur, which were also overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Heavy rains helped dampen fires the following day, and rescue workers began trying to separate the twelve mangled carriages of the train and identify the bodies contained inside. Many were unrecognizable and never identified. Many bodies were not even found. Death toll The official death toll released was set at 285 killed and over 300 injured in the crash. Unofficial totals have claimed that over 1000 or even more were killed, including 90 soldiers. This is possible because although there were only 72 seats in each of the seven general compartments that were involved in the accident, all of them were crowded far beyond capacity. Moreover, there were many ticketless travelers who were not included in the official count. Because of the nature of the crash and fire, as well as the large number of ticketless people who may have been on the trains, the bodies could not be separately identified. There has also been speculation that explosives carried on the military train may have been the cause of the explosion following the impact, rather than the trains themselves. This has been denied by the Indian military, but has remained a controversial issue. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar resigned on moral grounds, only second railway minister to do so, after Lal Bahadur Shastri. Other Indian rail disasters This was the worst Indian rail disaster since the Firozabad rail disaster in 1995, and is comparable to the Bihar train disaster of 1981, in which as many as 800 people were reported to have died. References External links http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/aug/03rail3.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20131217221449/http://www.financialexpress.com/old/ie/daily/19990814/ige14049.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130726151415/http://archives.digitaltoday.in/indiatoday/19990816/nation2.html 1999 in India Explosions in 1999 Railway accidents in 1999 August 1999 events in Asia 1990s in Assam 1990s in West Bengal Railway accidents and incidents in Bihar Disasters in Assam Disasters in West Bengal Train collisions in India Uttar Dinajpur district 1999 disasters in India