The biggest train accidents in the world. Railway accident statistics
On July 31, 1815, the Philadelphia Disaster occurred, which became the first railroad disaster in history. We decided to give a list of the most terrible disasters on the railway throughout history.
Occurred on July 31, 1815 during a test of the Mechanical Traveler steam locomotive. The train developed a low speed and in order to impress the public, the creators decided to increase it by increasing the pressure in the boiler tank. The ensuing explosion killed 16 people. Among the dead were mainly workers, but several outside observers were also affected. In some sources, this accident is not considered a railway accident, since it did not occur on the main road, but at a special testing site. Be that as it may, the Philadelphia railway accident remains in history in first place in the number of deaths from a steam boiler explosion.
On May 8, 1842, the Versailles railway disaster occurred, killing more than fifty people. The terrible incident happened because the train derailed due to a faulty axle. At the time of the incident, the carriages were crowded with people, as the train was moving from Versailles after mass celebrations were taking place in the city. Due to such a terrible coincidence, the number of victims turned out to be so colossal. After the first car derailed, the pusher at the rear of the train continued moving, causing a fire.
Occurred on October 22, 1875. One locomotive transported both people and oil; in poor visibility conditions, the driver did not see the traffic lights. By coincidence, the train flew onto an unfinished section of rails, after which it went downhill. Oil tanks caught fire, causing huge casualties. According to official data, 70 people died.
On December 28, 1879, one of the largest disasters occurred on the bridge over the River Tay. Due to gusty, heavy winds, several spans of the bridge were blown out, causing the train to fall into the water. All 75 passengers in the carriages were killed.
On July 16, 1945, the largest railway disaster in German history occurred. A train carrying prisoners of war crashed into a US Army train, causing the train to derail, causing the carriages to catch fire and causing numerous casualties on both trains.
On August 6, 1952, one of the deadliest disasters in the USSR occurred, killing about 109 people. The disaster occurred because the train ran over a horse. According to official data, a train weighing a thousand tons was derailed because of the animal. In fact, the disaster occurred, among other things, due to the overload of the train, as well as the imperfection of the safety measures of that time.
Train crash at Harrow & Wealdstone station
On October 8, 1952, a train crash occurred in London. A train pulled into the train standing on the platform. Then a locomotive rushing at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour flew into the resulting traffic jam. The tragedy resulted in 340 casualties and 112 deaths.
On June 6, 1981, one of the worst train accidents in history occurred. Due to an attempt to stop in front of an animal running onto the road, as well as due to heavy winds, 7 carriages carrying about a thousand people were overturned into the water. About five thousand passengers died in the disaster.
The largest disaster in Russian history occurred on June 3, 1989. Due to an accident on the pipeline, when two oncoming trains passed, the air-fuel mixture that had accumulated in the lowland ignited, resulting in a powerful explosion that scattered the trains like matchboxes. The tragedy resulted in a gigantic fire that killed 645 people and disabled hundreds. About 200 children died during the crash. The force of the explosion was comparable to the power of the explosion atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The column of flame was visible hundreds of kilometers away.
On December 26, 2004, the largest and deadliest railway tragedy occurred. Due to the earthquake in Indian Ocean and the resulting tsunami that hit the railway running along the coast, the train was washed into the ocean. About 2,000 people died.
There is less talk about phobia regarding traveling on trains than about aerophobia. Being in an environment familiar to a person, and not in the air, creates the illusion of complete safety. However, a large-scale passenger train disaster in Spain, in which more than 70 people died and more than 150 were injured, reminded how relative safety is in our technological age.
In less than 13 years of the 21st century, several dozen major disasters have occurred in railways ah peace.
Express hit by tsunami
On December 26, 2004, perhaps the largest train derailment in the history of railway transport occurred. It was not the fault of people and equipment - the cause was the violence of the elements.
The infamous tsunami hit Sri Lanka in December 2004. At that moment, when the destructive waves approached the coast of the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, a passenger train packed to capacity was moving along the railway that ran close to the sea.
Ironically, the express wore beautiful name"Queen of the Sea". The composition was very popular among tourists because most during his journey he moved several tens of meters from the water. On the eve of the Christmas holidays it turned out great amount and local residents traveling home from business centers for the holidays, and travelers who decided to admire the views of Sri Lanka.
The exact number of passengers remains unknown - in addition to the 1,500 officially traveling on the train, there were several hundred free riders, which is common in Asian countries.
A train stopped at a red signal was hit by a tsunami near the village of Peraliya. The train with people was literally swept away by water. An 80-ton diesel locomotive was thrown 50 meters, and 30-ton carriages were scattered around the area. Two carriages were carried into the ocean.
The destruction in the region was such that the first rescuers were able to reach the train only on the third day. The exact number of victims is unlikely to ever be established - according to the most rough estimates, out of 1,900 people on the train, no more than 150 survived.
This train is on fire
On February 20, 2002, a passenger train was traveling on the route Cairo - Luxor in Egypt. This route is always extremely busy, the cheapest third class carriages are especially crowded. With a capacity of 150 people, they manage to accommodate more than 300 at a time.
Near the city of Al-Ayyat, one of the third-class carriages caught fire. For unknown reasons, the driver did not immediately notice the fire, and the flaming train drove for about ten kilometers.
At high speed, the flames rapidly gained strength. As a result, the flames engulfed the entire train, seven cars burned to the ground. Six of them belonged to the third class.
People burned alive, jumped out of windows in fear full speed ahead and crashed to death. In total, more than 380 people became victims of the disaster, several hundred received burns and injuries.
Dangerous cargo
On the night of February 17-18, 2004 in Iran, near the city of Nishapur at the Abu Muslim station, a train consisting of 51 cars suddenly rolled out of its parking lot and rushed down the slope. The unauthorized journey lasted about 20 kilometers until the carriages derailed and caught fire near the village of Khayyam at about 4 am.
Rescuers and firefighters arrived at the scene of the emergency, and hundreds of curious people gathered around. The cars were loaded with sulfur, gasoline, nitrate fertilizers and cotton. In most countries, such cargoes are classified as explosive, but in Iran they were all considered non-hazardous until February 2004.
In addition to ordinary onlookers, journalists and even local politicians turned up at the crash site, trying to increase their popularity before the upcoming elections.
The firefighters seemed to have the situation under control, but at about half past nine in the morning the cargo suddenly detonated. Experts subsequently estimated the power of the explosion at 180 tons of TNT. The village of Khayyam was destroyed, and the explosion itself was heard even 70 kilometers from the epicenter.
The death of 295 people was officially announced, including more than 180 firefighters, rescuers and officials. 460 people were injured. Foreign observers believe that the data on casualties and wounded are significantly underestimated.
Terrorist attack
On March 11, 2004, in the capital of Spain, Madrid, four explosions occurred in commuter trains over the course of an hour and a half. The Atocha station, as well as the El Pozo and Santa Eugenia stations, were attacked.The suicide bombings were carried out during the morning rush hour in order to achieve the maximum number of victims. Initially, the Spanish government suspected Basque separatists from the ETA movement of organizing the terrorist attack, but representatives of this movement categorically denied their involvement.
As it turned out later, the sabotage was carried out by radical Islamists close to Al-Qaeda.
The attacks were carefully planned: they were carried out three days before parliamentary elections in Spain and exactly 911 days after the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 (“9/11”).
The explosions killed 192 people from 17 countries and injured more than 2,050.
A year later, on March 11, 2005, a memorial in honor of the victims of the terrorist attack, “Forest of the Dead,” was opened near Madrid’s Atocha train station. In memory of the victims, 22 olive trees and 170 cypress trees were planted.
Over speed
Japanese railways are considered one of the most reliable and safe in the world, but even here they are not without incidents.
On April 25, 2005, the late high-speed train 5418M significantly exceeded the speed when passing a dangerous turn. Instead of the required 70 kilometers per hour, the train entered the turn at a speed of 116 kilometers per hour.
As a result, the train derailed and literally flew into a multi-level automatic parking building near Amagasaki Station. The first two carriages were literally flattened by the impact, and the rest were also hit hard.
There were about 700 people on the train, of whom 107 died and 562 were injured.
Various versions were considered as the causes of the disaster, but an analysis of all the data showed that the culprit of the tragedy was a 23-year-old driver Ryujiro Takami. The young specialist had already been reprimanded for driving mistakes, and on this trip, shortly before the accident, he made a mistake with the braking, driving at the station 40 meters further than expected. It was for this reason that the train was late.
Fearing another penalty, Takami became, as they say, “reckless” and destroyed the train and people. Ryujiro Takami himself also died in the disaster.
Emergency situations on railways lead to casualties and serious destruction. Sometimes hundreds of people die due to an absurd accident. How does this happen? Let's try to figure it out.
Terrible train accidents in the USSR
Rail transport, both passenger and freight, was widespread in the USSR. Several major railway accidents are known to have occurred in the territory Soviet Union.Disaster near Ufa
The largest of all railway accidents is considered to be the disaster near Ufa, which occurred in the summer of 1989. The explosion occurred while two oncoming passenger trains were passing.The cause was a cloud that appeared after an accident on the nearby Siberia-Ural-Volga region pipeline. Five hundred and seventy-five people became victims of the explosion, and about the same number were injured.
Explosion in Arzamas
In the summer of 1988, an explosion occurred in the city of Arzamas. railway crossing. Cars carrying hexogen exploded. As a result, more than eight hundred people were left homeless, one hundred and fifty-one houses were completely destroyed. One and a half thousand people were injured, the explosion claimed the lives of ninety-one people. 
Disaster at Kamenskaya station
The accident that occurred at the Kamenskaya station is considered one of the worst disasters in the USSR. Due to faulty brakes, a freight train entered the station at a speed of one hundred kilometers per hour and collided with the tail of a passenger train standing there. It was night, the passengers were sleeping. One hundred and six people were killed and one hundred and fourteen were injured. The tragedy happened in nineteen eighty-seven.Worst railway accidents in the world
Railway accidents periodically occur in all countries of the world, however, not all of them are large-scale and destructive. Below are examples of the largest accidents.Versailles train accident (France)
One of the first large-scale disasters on the railway occurred in one thousand eight hundred and forty-two. The train, traveling along the Versailles-Paris route, was crowded with passengers returning from mass celebrations. It derailed, killing more than fifty people. 
Crash in Bihar (India)
One of the most terrible railway disasters occurred in 1981 in India. A train carrying about a thousand passengers overturned due to strong winds and an attempt to slow down in front of an animal that had stepped onto the railway tracks. More than five hundred people were killed. 
Accident at Steblova station (Czechoslovakia)
The largest disaster in Czechoslovakia that occurred on the railway was the disaster near the Steblova station in nineteen sixty. Two trains crashed head-on at high speed. This happened due to the fault of the train crew of one of the trains, which passed a prohibitory semaphore signal. One hundred and eighteen people died. About the same number were injured.Serious emergency situations on railways in modern Russia
IN modern Russia unfortunately, the same thing happens train accidents. Here are some of them.Crash in Podsosenka
In nineteen ninety-two, a train traveling from Riga to Moscow collided with a freight train at the Podsosenka crossing. A fire started and spread to passenger cars. Forty people were killed and twenty-two were injured.Nevsky Express crash
In two thousand and nine, the Nevsky Express train crashed due to a terrorist attack. Ninety-eight people were wounded and eighteen were killed. Among the dead were several government officials and prominent businessmen. 
Clashes in the Chelyabinsk region near Asha
In two thousand and eleven, two freight trains loaded with coal collided due to a faulty braking system. As a result, seventy carriages derailed and two people died.The worst train accident in history
The deadliest and largest disaster in the history of railways is the one that occurred in Sri Lanka, near the village of Peraliya. After what happened in the Indian Ocean strong earthquake, a tsunami hit the coastal part of Sri Lanka. A passenger train passing along the coastline during the tsunami was washed away into the ocean waters. 
According to various sources, the disaster claimed from one thousand seven hundred to two thousand human lives. This happened in December two thousand and four.
Modern trains are created in compliance with all safety standards and using high technology. It even turns out that trains move faster on the ground than airplanes. There is a website about the fastest trains.
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Rail transport ranks third after road and air transport in terms of traffic safety.
Causes of railway accidents
The most common causes of accidents in railway transport:
- natural physical deterioration technical means;
- violation of operating rules;
- increasing complexity of technologies;
- increase in the number, power and speed of vehicles;
- increase in population density near railway facilities, non-compliance by the population with safety rules.
The leading position, about 25%, among the main causes of accidents in railway transport, is occupied by derailments.
About 25% of derailments and accidents on the railroad are caused by train collisions with automobile and horse-drawn vehicles, handcars, and cyclists. Most often this happens at railway crossings.
Violations in the railway traffic control system lead to the train leaving the busy track and causing a collision. The reason for this may be a violation of the order of maneuvering work on station tracks.
The reason for many emergency situations in railway transport are explosions and fires.
Chronology of disasters
On June 12, 1965, on the Novinka-Chascha section near Leningrad, a very major crash. The station manager mistakenly released the trains towards each other; the drivers saw each other only 11 seconds before the collision.
On February 1, 1988, on the “Privolzhye - Filino” stretch near Yaroslavl, a freight train that was transporting highly toxic substances (TDS) crashed. 7 cars derailed, including 3 tanks with heptyl (TDS of the first toxicity class). The cause of the crash was Unblocking the arrow due to a destroyed buffer falling on it. As a result, a center of chemical contamination was formed with an area of over 5 thousand square meters. 3 thousand people were under threat of defeat. On restoration work it took almost 18 days.
On June 4, 1988, at 9:32 a.m., three carriages of a freight train traveling from Dzerzhinsk to Kazakhstan, with 118 tons of industrial explosives intended for mining enterprises, exploded at the Arzamas-1 station of the Gorky Railway. 91 people were killed, including 17 children, 840 were injured. 250 meters of the railway track, the railway station and station buildings, and nearby residential buildings were destroyed. The government commission did not establish the cause of the explosion.
In the same year, a passenger train crashed at Bologoye station. 31 people were killed and 182 were injured. On August 16, 1988, high-speed passenger train No. 159 "Aurora" on the Leningrad-Moscow route crashed on the Berezayka - Poplavenets section. In the crash, all 15 cars of the train were derailed. A fire broke out in the overturned restaurant carriage and spread to other carriages.
On October 4, 1988, at 4.30 am, an explosion occurred on the Sverdlovsk - Sortirovochny section. Two trains with coal and explosives took off into the air. According to official data alone, six people died: four at the scene of the accident, two already in the hospital. Thousands were seriously injured; the most common are shrapnel wounds to the eyes and face. Hundreds of families lost a roof over their heads.
On June 3, 1989, the largest railway accident occurred: when two oncoming trains passed on the Ulu-Telyak - Kazayak section (Bashkortostan). The reason is an explosion of a hydrocarbon-air mixture accumulated near and on the railway track. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to the explosion of 250-300 tons of TNT. At its epicenter were two passenger trains: Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk. 11 cars were thrown off the tracks, 7 of them burned completely, 26 cars burned out both inside and out. According to various sources, 575 or 645 people died.
In November 1989, at the Rudny station of the Murmansk branch of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, due to the negligence of the dispatcher, a collision occurred between two freight locomotives. One locomotive crew was killed, and members of another received various injuries.
In March 1992, at the Podsosenka crossing of the Velikiye Luki - Rzhev section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, a passenger train collided with an oncoming freight train. As a result, 43 people were killed and 108 were injured.
On March 1, 1993, in the Moscow region, a tank containing styrene, a toxic substance whose vapors strongly irritate the mucous membranes, overturned during a freight train crash. There is a styrene leak. 39 people were injured, of whom 11 died.
On March 3, 1992, on the Oktyabrskaya Railway, fast passenger train No. 4 Riga-Moscow at the exit switches of the Podsosenki siding collided with a freight train from the opposite direction. 41 people were killed, 16 were seriously injured. Both locomotive crews were fatally injured. The crash occurred due to the passage of a prohibiting signal by the locomotive crew of the Riga-Moscow passenger train.
On November 19, 1993, in the Arkhangelsk region, on the Kizema-Loiga stretch, a handcar collided with the tail car of a freight train. Of the 25 people in the trolley, 24 were injured and one died.
On April 28, 1994, a train accident occurred 180 kilometers southeast of Ufa (Bashkiria): two freight trains collided on a narrow-gauge railway. The collision killed two people. The reason was a violation by the station manager of the rules for operating railway transport, which allowed the train to run through a red traffic light.
On August 11, 1994, 115 kilometers from Belgorod, on the Topoli - Urazovo section of the Southern Railway, a train accident occurred. Several tail cars broke away from a freight train coming from Ukraine and overturned onto a parallel track; an oncoming electric train crashed into them. 20 people were killed, 52 were injured.
On February 9, 1995, the Moscow-Kyiv passenger train crashed due to a malfunction of the electric locomotive. forced stop on the Sukhinichi - Zhivodovka section of the Moscow Railway. The train rolled down and collided with the locomotive of the Moscow - Khmelnitsky train. As a result of the impact, four passengers of the last carriage died at the scene of the accident, and 11 passengers were injured of varying degrees of severity.
On July 20, 1995, two oncoming trains collided on the Gorky Railway near Sergach, Nizhny Novgorod Region: a postal freight train and a freight train. Three liquefied gas tanks exploded. Six people were killed and 20 were injured.
On August 8, 1995, in the Krasnodar Territory, on the Tikhoretsk - Kavkazskaya section of the North Caucasus Railway, a freight train, not reaching two kilometers from the Kavkazskaya station, crashed. 16 cars derailed and overturned, four tanks with hydrogen peroxide and two with gasoline caught fire. Two and a half kilometers of the railway track were disabled.
On February 11, 1996, in Volokolamsk, near Moscow, at a railway crossing near the Bukholovo station, an electric train collided with a bus that was transporting a group of schoolchildren. Two children died, five schoolchildren and the bus driver were taken to intensive care.
On May 31, 1996, on the Litvinovo-Talmenka section of the Kemerovo Railway, four cement cars unhooked from a freight train and rolled into the station area, where a crowded train crashed into them. 100 people were injured, 17 died.
On July 8, 1998, a major disaster occurred in the Moscow region. In the area of the Bekasovo-1 station, a gravel cleaning machine missed the prohibitory semaphore signal. Having failed to let the train pass, it crashed into the train. The car was thrown onto the opposite line, under the wheels of an oncoming train. 3 people died. If the accident had not occurred at 7 a.m., there would have been many more casualties.
On April 4, 1999, near the Voevodskoye station (Mordovia), on the 642nd kilometer of the Kuibyshev railway, the Syzran-Ruzaevka freight train derailed. The accident occurred due to wear and tear on the railway track. 12 wagons loaded with VAZ cars went downhill, two platforms and a heated wagon overturned. About 250 meters of the canvas and 150 meters of the contact line were damaged.
On January 26, 2000, a collision occurred between passenger and freight trains on the Torbino - Mstinsky Bridge section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. As a result of the accident, the assistant driver was killed and three people were injured.
On December 9, 2001, at the Gonzha station of the Trans-Baikal Railway in the Amur Region, a collision freight trains. The impact derailed the four tail cars of the first train. As a result of the disaster, two people died.
On September 25, 2001, on the Mechetenskaya - Ataman stretch, 130 kilometers southeast of Rostov-on-Don, six cars and the locomotive of passenger train No. 191 Rostov-Baku derailed. The cause of the accident was the absence of 25 meters of track rails, removed by unknown attackers.
On April 1, 2002, near the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, a collision occurred between a Moscow-Khabarovsk passenger train and a shunting diesel locomotive. Upon impact, the diesel locomotive's wheelset was torn off. 22 people sought medical help.
On November 11, 2002, at the Baltiysky station in St. Petersburg, an electric train left the depot after repairs for a run-in. Due to a malfunction of the brake system, two carriages of the train left the tracks under the tented part of the station, where passengers were located. Four people were killed and nine were injured.
December 5, 2003 on a passenger train Kislovodsk - Mineral water, which was located near the central station of the city of Essentuki (Stavropol Territory), an explosive device filled with metal objects with a power equal to 30 kilograms of TNT went off. 47 people died, injuries varying degrees More than 180 people were seriously injured.
On December 18, 2003, at the 86th kilometer of the Ishcherskaya - Stoderevskaya railway section of the North Caucasus Railway (Naursky district of Chechnya), an explosive device went off under the locomotive of freight train No. 2503. There were no casualties.
On December 24, 2003, on the Tulun-Utai railway section (Irkutsk region), the Vladivostok-Novosibirsk train collided with a vehicle caught at the crossing by truck KamAZ. Three people died.
On June 12, 2005, at the 153rd kilometer of the railway on the Uzunovo - Bogatishchevo section, the Grozny - Moscow train was blown up. Four carriages derailed. 42 people sought medical help, five of whom were hospitalized. According to the FSB, a shellless explosive device with a capacity of three kilograms of TNT went off.
On June 15, 2005, on the Zubtsovo - Arestovo section, a train with fuel oil derailed, 10 tanks overturned and depressurized, up to 300 tons of fuel oil spilled onto the ground, of which about 2 tons fell into the Gostyushka River - a tributary of the Vazuza River, which flows into the Volga River .
On July 11, 2007, in the Amur Region, on the stretch between the Urusha and Sgibeevo stations of the Mogochinsky branch of the Trans-Baikal Railway, while a freight train was moving, 12 tail cars broke away from the train and overturned. 300 meters of the railway track were destroyed and a power line support was damaged. There were no casualties.
August 13, 2007 on the Burga - Malaya Vishera section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, while passing high speed train No. 166 "Nevsky Express", an accident occurred. Its cause was the undermining of the railway track by a homemade explosive device with a capacity of 8-9 kilograms of TNT. As a result of the explosion, the electric locomotive and all 12 cars derailed. 60 people were injured.
On November 27, 2009, at about 10 p.m., near the village of Erzovka, on the 285th kilometer of the Oktyabrskaya Railway section, an explosion occurred under the locomotive of the Nevsky Express train. There were 661 passengers on the train at the time of the crash. The first cars, by inertia, passed through the explosion at high speed, the last three were practically crushed by the blast wave. There were about 200 people in these carriages at that moment. The wounded and survivors were evacuated by air by helicopters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to hospitals in nearby settlements.
As of November 29, 25 people are known to have died, and another 26 are listed as missing. The list of victims admitted to hospitals in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Tver regions contains 104 names.
26 years ago, on the night of June 3-4, 1989, in the bearish corner of the Urals on the border of the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria, a pipeline through which liquefied gas pumped from Western Siberia to the European part of the Soviet Union. At the same moment, 900 meters from the scene of the incident, Trans-Siberian Railway Two resort trains, crowded with vacationers, passed in opposite directions at once. It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history, killing at least 575 people, including 181 children. Onliner.by talks about the incredible chain that led to her random coincidences which had monstrous consequences.
Early summer of 1989. While the still united country is living out its last years, the friendship of peoples is bursting at the seams, the proletarians are actively disunited, the only food in stores is canned bulls in tomato sauce, but pluralism and glasnost are in their heyday: tens of millions of Soviet people cling to their TV screens, watching the meetings with desperate interest Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. The crisis is, of course, a crisis, but the vacation is on schedule. Hundreds of seasonal resort trains are still rushing to the hot seas, where the population of the Union can still spend their full labor rubles on a well-deserved vacation.
All tickets for trains No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler and No. 212 Adler - Novosibirsk have been sold. Twenty carriages of the first and eighteen carriages of the second were filled with families of Urals and Siberians who were just striving for the much-desired Black Sea coast of the Caucasus and had already rested there. They carried vacationers, rare business travelers, and young guys from the Chelyabinsk hockey team “Tractor-73”, two-time national champions, who decided instead of a vacation to work in the grape harvest in sunny Moldova. In total, on that terrible June night, there were (only according to official data) 1,370 people inside the two trains, including 383 children. The numbers are most likely inaccurate, since separate tickets were not sold for children under five years of age.
At 1:14 a.m. on June 4, 1989, almost all passengers on both trains were already asleep. Some were tired after a long journey, others were just getting ready for it. No one was prepared for what happened in the next moment. And you cannot prepare for this under any circumstances.
“I woke up from falling from the second shelf onto the floor (it was already two o’clock in the morning according to local time), and everything around was already on fire. It seemed to me that I was seeing some kind of nightmare: the skin on my hand was burning and slipping, a child engulfed in fire was crawling under my feet, a soldier with empty eye sockets was walking towards me with outstretched hands, I was crawling past a woman who could not extinguish her own hair, and in the compartment there are no shelves, no doors, no windows..."- one of the miraculously surviving passengers later told reporters.
The explosion, the power of which, according to official estimates, was 300 tons of TNT, literally destroyed two trains, which at that very moment met at the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section, near the border of the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria. Eleven cars were thrown off the rails, seven of them were completely burned. The remaining cars burned out inside, they were broken in the shape of an arc, the rails were twisted into knots. And in parallel with this, tens and hundreds of unsuspecting people died a painful death.
Pipeline PK-1086 Western Siberia- Ural - Volga region was built in 1984 and was originally intended for oil transportation. Already at the last moment, almost before the facility was put into operation, the Ministry of Oil Industry of the USSR, guided by a logic understandable only to it, decided to repurpose the oil pipeline into a product pipeline. In practice, this meant that instead of oil, the so-called “broad fraction of light hydrocarbons” - a mixture of liquefied gases(propane and butane) and heavier hydrocarbons. Although the facility changed its specialization, it was built as ultra-reliable with a view to future high pressure inside. However, already at the design stage, the first mistake was made in a chain of those that five years later led to the largest tragedy on the railways of the Soviet Union.
At 1,852 kilometers long, a full 273 kilometers of the pipeline passed in close proximity to the railways. In addition, in a number of cases the object came dangerously close to populated areas, including quite big cities. For example, in the section from kilometer 1428 to kilometer 1431, PK-1086 passed less than a kilometer from the Bashkir village of Sredny Kazayak. Gross violation safety standards were discovered after the launch of the product pipeline. Construction of a special bypass around the village began only the following year, 1985.
In October 1985, during the earthworks when opening PK-1086 at the 1431st kilometer of its length, powerful excavators working on the ultra-protected pipe caused it significant mechanical damage, for which the product pipeline was not designed at all. Moreover, after the completion of the bypass construction, the insulation of the opened and abandoned open area in violation building codes has not been checked.
Four years after those events, a narrow gap 1.7 meters long appeared in the damaged section of the product pipeline. The propane-butane mixture began to flow through it into environment, evaporate, mix with the air and, being heavier than it, accumulate in the lowland through which the Trans-Siberian Railway passed 900 meters to the south. Very close to the strategic railway line, along which passenger and freight trains passed every few minutes, a real invisible “gas lake” formed.
The drivers drew the attention of the site dispatchers to strong smell gas in the area of the 1710th kilometer of the road, as well as a drop in pressure in the pipeline was noted. Instead of taking emergency measures to stop traffic and eliminate the leak, both duty services chose not to pay attention to what was happening. Moreover, the organization operating PK-1086 even increased the gas supply to it to compensate for the pressure drop. As propane and butane continued to accumulate, disaster became inevitable.
The Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk trains could not possibly meet at this fateful point. Under no circumstances if they followed the schedule. But train 212 was late technical reasons, and the 211th was forced to make an emergency stop at one of the intermediate stations to disembark a passenger who was going into labor, which also resulted in a shift in the schedule. An absolutely incredible coincidence, unthinkable even in the most cruel nightmares, coupled with a blatant violation of technological discipline, nevertheless occurred.
Two late trains met at the damned 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway at 1:14 am. An accidental spark from the pantograph of one of the electric locomotives, or a spark from the train braking after a long descent into a lowland, or even a cigarette butt thrown out of the window was enough to ignite the “gas lake”. At the moment the trains met, a massive explosion of the accumulated propane-butane mixture occurred, and the Ural forest turned into hell.
A policeman from Asha, a city 11 kilometers from the crash site, later told reporters: “I was awakened by a flash of terrible brightness. There was a glow on the horizon. A couple of tens of seconds later, a blast wave reached Asha, breaking a lot of glass. I realized that something terrible had happened. A few minutes later I was already at the city police department, together with the guys I rushed to the “duty room” and rushed towards the glow. What we saw is impossible to imagine even with a sick imagination! The trees burned like giant candles, and the cherry-red carriages smoked along the embankment. There was an absolutely impossible single cry of pain and horror from hundreds of dying and burned people. The forest was burning, the sleepers were burning, people were burning. We rushed to catch the rushing “living torches,” knock the fire off them, and bring them closer to the road away from the fire. Apocalypse…".
More than 250 people instantly burned in this gigantic fire. Exact numbers No one can say, because the temperature at the epicenter of the disaster exceeded 1000 degrees - there was literally nothing left of some passengers. Another 317 people died later in hospitals from terrible burns. The worst thing is that almost a third of all victims were children.
People died in families, children - in entire classes, along with the teachers who accompanied them on vacation. Parents often didn’t even have anything left to bury. 623 people received injuries of varying severity, many of them remained disabled for life.
Despite the fact that the scene of the tragedy was in a relatively inaccessible area, the evacuation of the victims was organized quite quickly. Dozens of helicopters were working, the victims of the disaster were taken out by trucks, even by an uncoupled electric locomotive of a freight train that stood at a nearby station and passed those same Adler passenger trains. The number of victims could have been even greater if it had not been for a modern burn center, which opened in Ufa shortly before the incident. Doctors, police, railway workers, finally ordinary people, volunteers from neighboring communities worked around the clock.
