NEW DELHI: Railway minister Suresh Prabhu may regret the choice of his words when he described the twin railway derailment in Harda Madhya Pradesh , as a “natural calamity” that could not be avoided. It now appears the disaster that killed 25 passengers and injured 50, was a result of maintenance failure.Making a suo motu statement in Parliament on Wednesday, Prabhu said, “the prima-facie cause of the incident is stated to be flash floods due to heavy rains.” He said that the tracks were “washed away” by flash floods. Railway officials, who visited the accident site, however, said that it was actually a case of “sinking of track” which does not happen instantly, and there are enough warning signs before the track goes down.“A rail fracture can happen overnight but not this. It is obvious that the maintenance was not taken seriously. The rains just did not happen suddenly. It’s monsoon and there is a proper drill for patrolling during this time. It is the job of the gangman to see if the track is sinking. There is ballast under the track and first that goes down. This is followed by the sinking of the formation and finally the track. It goes down centimetre by centimetre,” revealed a senior railway engineer.He also said that the railways could not get away by saying that it happened in an instant since another train had passed the track 10 minutes earlier. “It builds up, probably giving 100 warning indications, before it actually goes down,” the railway board official told . If the track is breached or washed away, it will simply hang. “In this case, it was there, but sunk,” he explained after visiting the site.It was first of its kind accident where two trains derailed at the same spot in quick succession. First, 11 coaches of Kamayani Express derailed as the track sunk.Sources claim that though precautions were taken by switching on the flasher lights to warn other oncoming trains, there wasn’t enough time for the Janata Express to stop. “A train requires a braking distance of 1.4 km. Though it appears that Janata Express driver had applied brakes there wasn’t enough time for him to bring it to a complete halt. Thus, it too derailed,” the official said.This particular stretch had been closed down for over a month due to a major fire at Itarsi railway station in June that destroyed the route relay interlocking cabin. “The stretch opened just about a fortnight ago. The maintenance seems to have suffered on this count too with some laxity setting in,” he added.