Train-surfing costs boy his arm

Teenager Thubelihle Ndelela, whose arm had to be amputated, meets up again with his plastic surgeon, Dr Stephen Simango, who has warned against the dangers of train surfing.

Teenager Thubelihle Ndelela, whose arm had to be amputated, meets up again with his plastic surgeon, Dr Stephen Simango, who has warned against the dangers of train surfing.

Published Aug 28, 2011

Share

BARBARA COLE

AN Umlazi teenager is lucky to be alive after a dangerous, thrill-seeking, train-surfing spree with his friends went horribly wrong.

As Thubelihle Ndelela, now 13, ran along the top of a moving train, jumping from coach to coach, he accidentally touched a live high-voltage power cable which sent thousands of direct current volts shooting through his body, throwing him off the train.

The current entered his body on his right hand and exited on his left shoulder – and the prank has now cost him his arm as surgeons had no choice but to amputate it.

“I almost died. I will never play on a train again,” he told his mother, Nonhlanhla, when she visited him in hospital.

Now his horrified mother and the specialist plastic surgeon called in to shape a stump on his amputated upper arm have decided to highlight the incident to raise awareness about the risky pastime.

Train-surfing is an international phenomenon where people – mostly teenagers – climb on top of trains and leap from coach to coach while it is in motion, whereas “staff riding” – another deadly game – involves getting into a train in motion.

Although Thubelihle’s mother and his plastic surgeon had never heard of it being done in Durban before, Thubelihle himself confided that he had been doing it for about three years.

“I have done it many times. It’s exciting,” he said.

Disaster

No-one had ever told him of the life-threatening dangers involved, though, he said.

Thubelihle was with about 10 friends – including high school pupils and even college students – when he embarked on his last, daring train-surfing session.

He had a ticket and boarded the train at Clairwood, but disaster struck when it was in between the Lindolihle station and Umlazi.

“I climbed out of the window and on to the top of the train. I was jumping from coach to coach. And then I touched one of those things (an insulator).”

Unfortunately for the prankster, he touched the live side of the insulator and when he looked at his hand, his thumb was “hanging down,” he said.

“I did not feel anything, so I did not realise I was burnt,” he recalled.

Thubelihle’s friends return-ed for him and, having cheated death, he was taken to the Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital in Umlazi.

His mother – a nurse at King Edward VIII Hospital – was called and she said that at first, she did not see his injuries.

“I just wanted to know what he was doing on a train. He does not even take the train to school. But when I did see his arm, I realised it was already dead,” she said.

Unable to save the muscles, surgeons amputated three-quarters of her son’s arm.

Then, Thubelihle’s mother asked specialist plastic and reconstruction surgeon, Dr Stephen Simango, based at St Augustine’s Hospital, to close up what was left of Thubelihle’s arm and make a stump.

Simango said: “It was very difficult to manage because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the condition.

“Thubelihle is very lucky to be alive. The amount of damage he had, many things could have killed him… He could have had kidney or heart failure. But age was on his side as well as early intervention.”

Thubelihle lost muscles, vessels and even nerves. He had also lost muscles on his back, and he has a burn mark on his head.

Simango had to carry out a further amputation, but saved as much length on his patient’s arm as he could, explaining it was because his patient was still growing.

Medical aid footed the bill for the costly equipment, medication and expensive dressings needed to get the injuries to heal.

Thubelihle was in the hospital for a total of six weeks and is due to start occupational therapy to build up his remaining left arm.

His mother hopes medical aid will eventually contribute towards a prosthetic arm, although Simango said that she may need help to fund it as they are “quite expensive”.

Like many other parents, Thubelihle’s mother said she was in the dark about her son’s train-surfing activities.

“You think they are at home,” she said.

Despite her son’s brush with death, she thinks that it has not stopped his friends train-surfing for kicks.

Jumping

“They came to see him in hospital, but they are still doing it. I don’t think there is a way to stop them,” she said.

Simango believes that security should be stepped up on the trains.

Langalakhe Zwane, Metrorail’s public relations officer, said that staff had visited all the schools around Durban to warn of the dangers, which now even involved children jumping from coach to coach underneath them.

“And we are now going the extra mile and going to communities to get to the parents, because when we visit schools, the parents are not there. And when we go to raise awareness at the railway stations, the parents are rushing to work,” he said.

KwaZulu-Natal Metro Railway spokeswoman, Thandi Mkhize, said they were trying hard to make train surfers understand that they can lose their lives while doing this.

She said discussions were under way about what penalties to impose on people caught train-surfing.

As well as the safety awareness campaign being extended to councillors, it was also discussed with the commuter rail focus group. She pointed out that when trains had to stop because of incidents – and that included suicides on the lines – it affected the drivers.

The train was delayed, a new driver had to take over, passengers were late for work and if they were on the production line, the economy was affected.

Professor Lawrence Schlebusch, a Durban-based international expert on stress and self-destructive behaviour, said train-surfing was a high-risk behaviour, the result of peer pressure, and involved “leaving the decision to fate: whether you survive or not”.

Related Topics: