The word “metropolitan”, born from the Greek “metropolis”, means “metropolitan” or “city”. This is how the new type of urban transport, hidden under the ground, was named. Its first lines appeared in London in 1863. In 1860, the British firm Metropolitan Railway launched the first steam train in a shallow tunnel. The length of the line was only 3.6 kilometers. But during the operation of the underground train, its advantages over surface transport came to light: it was faster, did not have street hindrances and promised a great future. True, it also caused a lot of trouble: the engine smoked, thundered, required coal and created many inconveniences. Therefore, the metro began to develop actively only in 1890, when electricity came to industrial production. It was from this time that deeper tunnels began to be built in London,and trains were supplied with electric motors, which gave a significant impetus to the development of the underground as a whole, and then to the electrification of all land railways.
Following London, the metro appeared in New York, Budapest and Paris. The launch of the first line of the Paris Metro was timed to coincide with the opening of the 1900 World Industrial Exhibition. It was then in one of its pavilions that an innovation presented by the American "Otis Elevator Company" and promising the metro to accelerate passenger transportation was demonstrated. From that time until 1903, several tens of kilometers of lines were dug and mastered near the French capital. In a very short time, this type of transport has become popular. People came to the metro not only to ride, but also to admire the decoration of its stations, to look at the rapidly running trains - a miracle of that time.
Architect Hector Jumard gave free rein to his imagination, which was expressed in the decoration of stations and entrances to underground tunnels. He used marble, granite, ornamental stones. At the request of the architect, the platforms and the vaults of the tunnels were finished with beautiful stone; no flammable materials were used in the station decoration. Instead of sharp corners, he chose oval lines and generally gave a "youth" style to the entire architectural appearance of the Parisian metro.
As you know, the metro was powered by electricity. It was dangerous to step only on the rails along which the current ran, everything else was in relative safety. Therefore, the fire safety measures were not particularly strict. It would seem that everything was provided for the safety of passengers, and there would be no danger from anywhere.
But it was in this popular public transport that the largest metro disaster to date happened.
On August 10, 1903, at about eight o'clock in the evening, technical malfunctions were discovered in a passenger carriage at the Plaza de Nacion station. The car was supposed to be taken to the depot for repair work, so it was uncoupled from the train and dragged into a parallel tunnel. But on the way between the stations "Menilmontane" and "Couronne" in the car, apparently, a short circuit occurred, and he suddenly caught fire. The locomotive was immediately uncoupled from him, but it was not possible to extinguish the fire with his own improvised means. The extinguishing was impeded by the instantly generated large smoke and poor visibility. The smoke was thick and acrid. But the worst thing was that it crawled through the tunnels and prevented the drivers of other locomotives from seeing. Traffic lights proved to be practically useless, since the light of the searchlights could not penetrate the dense veil of smoke.
The driver of the moving train, who did not see the burning carriage because of the smoke, did not have time to brake and stop in time. At full speed, the train crashed into a burning car. The blow was so strong that some of the passengers fell out of the cars. In the smoke, they jumped onto the tracks and looked for a way out. But where is he, in which direction? No one could answer these questions: the drivers were killed in the collision.
The spreading fire and smoke were reported to the fire department. However, the firefighters who arrived at the metro could not get through to the damaged train and take people out. The smoke was so strong that they simply did not know where to go and what to extinguish.
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Electric trains stopped on almost all lines. Only on the morning of August 11 was it possible to determine the location of the incident. It was decided to blow up the tunnel to get to the accident site. The explosion created a gap in the ground, smoke poured out of it, and firefighters began to descend into this hole.
But this help is already too late for many. After the tragedy, people scattered in the dark through the tunnels in search of a way out. They did not find him, lost consciousness and died from the suffocating smoke. The ten hours spent in the smoke-filled tunnel were the last in the lives of a hundred people. Corpses of people lay on the rails in different corners of the tunnels. Many had handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths, but they did not save them.
For a long time Paris experienced this disaster, for a long time experts tried to find out the cause of the fire. Reinforced fire-fighting measures were taken. Since then, nothing else has happened in the Parisian metro related to human casualties. But in London in 1973 there was a major tragedy, the reasons for which have not yet been clarified. A train suddenly rushed past one of the central stations at a speed of about 65 kilometers per hour and ran into a dead end. The electric train driver, as eyewitnesses testified, looked very strange: with distraught eyes he looked at one point. It is possible that he had a heart attack while working. Or maybe he wanted to commit suicide in such a terrible way. In any case, the driver did not brake. Then 45 people died in the crash.
There have been disasters in the metro and in other countries, but in the entire history of the existence of the metro, one hundred people who died in the Paris subway remain the biggest victim to this day.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS" by N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev