Rail transport is called the safest because of the small number of accidents with fatalities. But on June 4, 1989, this claim was, if not refuted, then seriously challenged. The tragedy that happened that day became the largest railway disaster in the history of the USSR.
Every year, with the onset of summer, Soviet citizens sought to rest in the south. At the beginning of June 1989, the number of Black Sea trains traditionally increased. Among them were the Novosibirsk-Adler and Adler-Novosibirsk trains. Their passengers could not even imagine that instead of the southern paradise they would end up in a burning hell.
Explosion in the night
On the evening of June 3, 1989, train No. 211 Novosibirsk-Adler arrived in Chelyabinsk with a delay. Relaxed holidaymakers poured out onto the platform.
By midnight, the passengers went to bed to the measured beat of the wheels. Someone else was smoking in the vestibule, others were talking quietly. The same atmosphere reigned in the carriages of the Adler-Novosibirsk train moving towards. When the trains met, something terrible and inexplicable happened. The explosion was so strong that pieces of the skin were thrown out at a distance of six kilometers from the rail.
People did not have time to get scared, as the fire devoured their bodies.
Two huge trains were blown off the canvas like threads. Seven cars were completely burned out, 27 cars were burned on the outside and burned out inside, the length of the flame was two kilometers.
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The explosion and the column of fire alarmed the residents of nearby villages. “That summer, I was visiting my grandmother in the village of the UK Ashinskiy region, about 6-7 kilometers in a straight line to the place of the tragedy,” recalled one of the eyewitnesses. - At the entrance to the house she had an oak door with a forged powerful hook. She always put it on the loop. When the blast wave passed, this hook bent, and the door swung open in a split second. In the city of Asha, located 12 kilometers from the disaster, the explosion knocked out glass, and the column of flame was visible for 100 kilometers.
It was the villagers and Ashi who first came to the aid of the wounded - 15 minutes after the tragedy. They were the first to deliver the victims to hospitals. There were no mobile phones then, so the first call to the ambulance happened only half an hour after the explosion. From Ufa, 53 ambulance teams left for the scene of the explosion. They did not have an exact address, the landmark was a giant torch in the darkness of the night.
“There was no road, and rescuers made their way to the epicenter of the explosion on foot. And when they arrived, they saw the torn up wagons, burnt wood and burnt people,”recalled the resuscitator of the arrived brigade. If not for the doctors, there would have been much more victims of the disaster.
There was no collision
A couple of hours later, soldiers of military units pulled up to the scene of the tragedy.
“When we flew around the site of the accident, it seemed that some kind of napalm had passed,” recalled Alexei Godok, an employee of the South Ural Railway. - Black stakes remained from the trees, as if they had been stripped from root to top. The carriages were scattered, scattered ….
One of the volunteers picked up a burned five-year-old girl at the scene of the tragedy. She cried and called for her mother. The man handed her over to a doctor he knew: "Let's bandage it!" He almost immediately replied: "Valerka, that's it …" - "How's it all, just talked ?!" - "It's in shock."
The wounded were first transported to nearby hospitals by trucks. They took everyone without taking apart. Already in the hospital we looked. Those who had severe burns were simply put on the grass. The principle acted: to help those who have a chance to survive, because there were not enough resources. On the same day in Ufa, a voluntary mobilization of doctors was announced on the radio, and the population was called on to donate blood. Only residents of Asha surrendered 140 liters in the first hours.
The tragedy was immediately reported to the top leadership of the USSR. On the same day, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikolai Ryzhkov flew to Ufa.
By the time the leadership arrived, investigative actions were already underway at the crash site. It immediately became clear that there was no collision between the two trains. Exactly as well as directed sabotage. But what then caused the explosion?
The answer was simple - a leak of light hydrocarbons from the product pipeline "Western Siberia - Ural - Volga region". Originally, this 720 mm diameter pipe was laid for the transportation of crude oil. But it was decided to redesign it for the distillation of hydrocarbon products, although the rules prohibit doing this in pipes with a diameter of over 400 millimeters. Therefore, during the construction process, the pipe safety requirements were relaxed. In 1985, an excavator bucket hit the pipe, and four years later, a fistula formed in this place. Another version is that a crack in the pipeline appeared as a result of the action of stray currents.
Death cloud
Three weeks before the tragedy, the micro-fistula turned into a two-meter crack, from which liquid hydrocarbons flowed out under pressure. In the heat, 70% of the liquid passed into a flammable "gas cloud". It was heavier than air and began to fill the lowland where the main railway passed. Five hours before the crash, another train crew informed the dispatcher about the stoic smell of gas in the area.
But they decided to deal with the problem in the morning. And the pipeline manager, noticing a drop in pressure, did not look for the cause, but only increased the gas supply. The deadly cloud zone in six hours captured an area of 250 hectares. What next…
Best of all, one of the experts said about this: “It must have happened - the train that was leaving Novosibirsk was seven minutes late. Had he passed on time or met them elsewhere, nothing would have happened. At the moment of the meeting, a spark passed from the braking of one of the trains, gas accumulated in the lowland, and an instant explosion occurred.
Another version of detonation is the accidental butt of a passenger or a spark from under the pantograph of one of the locomotives.
As the commission established, the power of the explosion was 12 kilotons in TNT equivalent, which is comparable to the atomic explosion in Hiroshima (16 kilotons). After the disaster, the railway track was restored within the next few days, and trains were started up again. Passengers on passing trains looked at the burnt-out terrain as the backdrop for an apocalypse movie. It was decided not to restore the ill-fated pipeline.
The investigation into the explosion at the Asha station lasted six years. The charges were brought against nine officials from among the leaders of the pipeline construction. Two of them were amnestied, the rest were sentenced under Article 215 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (“violation of the rules during construction work”) for terms not exceeding five years.
The exact number of victims is unknown. According to official data, 258 people died at the crash site, 806 were taken to hospitals. Of these, 317 died later, increasing the death toll to 575.
But on the memorial, erected in 1992, 675 names are carved. Independent experts estimate the death toll at 780.
Three wagons of RDX
Exactly one year before the tragedy near the Asha station, on June 4, 1988, a similar incident occurred at the Arzamas station. During the arrival of the passenger train, there was a detonation of three RDX cars, which were being transported to Kazakhstan. As a result, 91 people, including 17 children, died. In total, 1,500 people were injured. The reason is non-observance of the rules for transporting industrial explosives.
Magazine: Secrets of the USSR No. 5