Buzz
On June 4, 1989, a railway catastrophe unfolded in Bashkortostan, Russia, resulting in 575 fatalities and over 800 injuries. This railway accident, also known as the Ufa Railway Tragedy, involved two passenger trains. However, these trains did not collide; rather, due to various reasons, they coincidentally appeared at the same location and were impacted by a horrendous explosion equivalent to 10 kilotons of TNT.
The incident occurred on the Kuybyshev railway line, connecting the town of Ufa - the capital and largest city of the autonomous socialist republic of Bashkir, now the Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia - and the town of Asha, the administrative center of the Ashinsky district in Chelyabinsk. The route was primarily used by tourist trains from Novosibirsk to a resort in Adler on the Black Sea coast. This was a 3-day journey, with passengers mostly consisting of families, young couples, vacationing soldiers, and notably, many children and teenagers.
Survivors struggled to escape from the twisted train cars, grappling with the encroaching inferno. Military and medical units were swiftly dispatched to the scene, with rescue personnel venturing into the woods to search for those who survived. The entire accident scene unfolded live on Soviet television. Tamara Striga, a nurse and one of the first responders, vividly recalled, 'We arrived at the scene with two emergency response teams. The first sight was three children and three teenagers approaching us like bats, their arms hanging with patches of skin dangling loosely,'
Corpses lay scattered everywhere, mingling with the wreckage and strewn around the train cars. In the initial 12 hours of rescue operations, victims were evacuated to nearby towns for immediate medical attention and transported to hospitals via ambulances and helicopters. Severe cases were flown to Moscow using Aeroflot aircraft. The rescue operation unfolded over 16 hours and 45 minutes, with a total of 806 individuals admitted to hospitals.
However, many victims succumbed to the overwhelming burns and traumatic brain injuries. Official statistics reported 575 fatalities and over 800 injuries, including 181 children among the deceased. Alternatively, another tally suggested the death toll could reach 780, or a memorial plaque at the accident site bore the names of 675 individuals. Numerous deceased individuals remained unaccounted for, and several victims remained unidentified.
Salavat Abdulin, father of Lena Abdulina, a victim of the tragic incident, shared his account: 'Our family was informed at the station that our daughter was in the rear carriage, which was unaffected. Someone then mentioned receiving a call from our daughter's teacher, Mr. Tulupov. He was with the children and assured everything was fine. However, they requested us to stay calm. By 6 p.m., we took a special train to Asha and from Asha to Ufa. Our daughter's name was not on the list of survivors. We searched from one hospital to another for 3 days but found nothing. Eventually, my wife and I searched the morgue... and there was a girl. The girl resembled our daughter, her head was entirely lost, only 2 lower teeth remained, and her body was charred. I thought I could recognize her by her legs, as she used to dance ballet, but even her legs were gone, only the torso remained. The torso resembled our daughter. I blamed myself for not recognizing her through blood type or a previous leg injury. Many body parts are still unidentified. 24 people from our daughter's school were not found, 21 confirmed dead, and 9 survived. No teachers were found.'Cause of the Tragedy:
On the afternoon of September 4, Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev and members of the government's accident investigation committee arrived at the scene. Despite rumors of sabotage, most officials believe the disaster occurred due to random factors. It didn't take long for investigators to pinpoint the cause of the explosion:Parallel to the Kuybyshev railway line is a pipeline originally designed for transporting oil but later repurposed to carry liquefied natural gas, serving the Soviet oil industry. In May 1984, the Soviet Oil Ministry abandoned plans to install a real-time automatic gas leak detection system. By 1985, during the construction of a bypass road, an excavator inadvertently cracked the pipeline, creating a 1.7-meter-long rupture.
There is information that engineers at a nearby monitoring station detected a pressure drop in the pipeline. However, instead of locating and fixing the leak, they simply increased the pressure to compensate. Some local residents reported the smell of gas to authorities, but officials seemed indifferent. Whatever the reason, the leak incident went undetected and unresolved.
When the two trains collided, sparks from the wheels ignited the gas cloud, causing this tragedy. According to Alexei Godok, deputy head of the South Urals railway passenger service: 'Due to an unfortunate incident, the train departing from Novosibirsk was delayed by 7 minutes. If not for the delay, the two trains would have met elsewhere, and the tragedy might not have occurred. The tragedy is that when the trains collided, one of them applied brakes, creating sparks. When these sparks met the combustible gas in the depression, the explosion almost instantly occurred. It was destiny... However, our fault is negligence. I spent time at the scene with the KGB and the military to investigate the cause of the tragedy. By the end of June 5, we determined that this was clearly an accident rather than sabotage. People in villages nearby had smelled gas for several days before; even the train driver carrying us mentioned it. An investigation found that gas had been leaking and accumulating here for 20 to 25 days, and notably, many other trains had passed through this railway line during that time. This gas pipeline was also shown to be unsupervised, despite relevant authorities being instructed to regularly check its condition. After the disaster, new guidelines were issued for all train drivers: report immediately upon smelling gas, and all train journeys must stop until gas leak checks are completed. This is a lesson we learned at a horrific cost...'
The investigation and prosecution of those involved in the Ufa tragedy extended over a period of 6 years. The disaster resulted from various factors, primarily human-related, such as a lax working culture, negligence, the gas pipeline system lacking leak detection devices, failure to address leaks but instead increasing pressure beyond the pipeline's allowed limit, disregarding warnings from the public about signs of gas leaks, misuse of pipelines, and alterations in the type and quantity of products transported through the pipelines. Nine individuals connected to the tragedy, including directors and supervisors of Nefteprovodmontazh - the company entrusted with pipeline construction, have been charged. They face a maximum prison sentence of 5 years.
