35 years ago, in 1982, at the Aviamotornaya station of the Moscow Metro, an escalator accident killed and injured several dozen people. Lack of official information led to the spread of ominous rumors about the incident. For a long time, many Muscovites and guests of the capital were afraid to ride the metro so as not to become victims of a new tragedy. What really happened on that fateful day became known only a few decades later.
Broken step
What happened at the Aviamotornaya station on February 17, 1982?
From the expert opinion: “At 17 o'clock on February 17 this year, when the escalator was operating to lower passengers … the blocking device was triggered, and the main drive motor turned off. The activated service brake, as a result of the violations committed, did not develop the braking torque and did not ensure the stopping of the stairway. Under the weight of the passengers (about 12 tons), an accelerated movement of the stairway occurred, but the emergency brake that had been deactivated earlier also did not stop the escalator.
These dry protocol lines need to be deciphered. The sequential chain of events looked like this.
Starting at 4:30 pm, the flow of metro passengers always increases - many leave work at this time. All additional escalators are used at the stations. So it happened on February 17 - the workers of the Aviamotornaya station turned on the fourth reserve escalator.
The accident was caused by a break in one of the steps. As a result, the protection worked and the electric motor turned off. The escalator canvas, which picked up speed, broke the fastening chains by inertia - and went down with increasing speed. The people on the escalator could not resist
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on their feet and fell, they were carried to the lower platform, where other passengers flew on top of them. The escalator on duty tried to stop the movement of the canvas with a working brake from the control panel in his cabin - but it did not work. The emergency brake on the balustrade didn't help either. New passengers crashed into the pile of bodies below. This nightmare lasted 110 seconds. The escalator's canvas developed a speed that was approximately 2.5 times higher than the maximum allowable, the number of passengers who fell on each other was almost 100 people.
Too thin plastic
Some passengers tried to jump onto the balustrade during the accelerated movement of the stairs, but it was made of thin (three millimeters) plastic that could not withstand the weight of a person. People fell into the space formed after the descent of the staircase - to a depth of several meters. They received serious bruises and cuts from the broken balustrade lamps. At the same time, the station workers did not block the entrance to the emergency escalator, and people continued to get there. Only when the attendant was able to call the escalator driver and he turned off all the mechanisms, the metal staircase stopped.
Authors of the project of the station “ Aviamotornaya ”
At 17:10 the entrance to the station was restricted, and at 17:35 it was completely closed. Trains passed her without stopping. Doctors and station workers rushed to dismantle the blockage of dozens of bodies. The dead were carried aside, the wounded were assisted. By the way, among the seriously injured was the well-known presenter of the popular science TV program "Health" Yulia Belyanchikova, she was taken to the hospital. Half an hour later, two cleaning women covered pools of blood with sawdust and then thoroughly washed the marble floor.
Word of mouth versions
Officially, nothing was reported about the disaster. The only short note was published by the newspaper "Vechernyaya Moskva":
“On February 17, 1982, an escalator accident occurred at the Aviamotornaya station of the Kalinin radius of the Moscow Metro. There are casualties among the passengers. The causes of the accident are being investigated."
But there were a great many rumors about the incident. Word of mouth passed on the words of a witness who allegedly escaped by a miracle - and right behind him a stairway broke, and he saw how people fell under the escalator and were ground by working mechanisms (in fact, under a moving staircase at a depth of several meters there was concrete base, but no mechanisms).
There was a popular story about a policeman who managed to catch on to the handrail, after which other people began to grab his clothes - and there were so many of them that the policeman's brushes were torn off from the severity of the guard.
The ominous rumor was fueled by the fact that the floor near the escalators at Aviamotornaya station was paved with red-veined marble. “Knowledgeable” people explained that these are traces of blood after the tragedy - and they are not mystically washed away in any way.
The main culprits of the accident, according to the popular version, were the designers who designed new escalators, received the Lenin Prize for them and immediately left for permanent residence abroad, and their creations turned out to be very unreliable. The duty officer was also accused, who was confused and could not turn on the brake in time.
The number of victims in word of mouth messages was in the hundreds. Moreover, the exact data has not been announced for a long time. Moreover, employees of enterprises located near the Aviamotornaya station, whose colleagues died that day, were forbidden to post obituaries so as not to disturb the people. Ambulance doctors were urged not to say anything about their call to the metro station. The rumors gave rise to the fear of many Muscovites to travel by subway - for several weeks the number of passengers was less than usual.
Details from abroad
The stories about the deaths of people falling into the rotating mechanisms were actively supported by foreign mass media - radio stations "Liberty" and "Voice of America" broadcasting in Russian for Soviet listeners, as well as by emigre print media. The emphasis was on bloody details and testimony. In particular, the newspaper Novoye Russkoe Slovo, published in New York, described the incident as follows: “According to eyewitnesses, as a result of the collapse of a crowded escalator, several hundred people fell into the mechanism that continued to rotate, dozens were crushed, and more than a hundred were crippled. All this took place in front of the eyes of people moving on a parallel escalator. Panic arose among them, causing additional casualties.”
Reported at a closed meeting
The results of the work of the investigation team were announced in November 1982 at a closed session of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR. They became public only in the late 1990s.
During the accident, more than 20 people were injured of varying severity, eight died - all as a result of a crush on the lower platform of the escalator.
A note about the tragedy in “ Evening Moscow ”
According to the investigation, the tragedy was caused by design mistakes, insufficient training of the personnel on duty, as well as the negligence of the employees responsible for the operation of escalators.
It turned out that in December 1981, service brakes of the new system were installed on four escalators of the Aviamotornaya station, which had to be adjusted according to the instructions sent. But the foreman continued to adjust the brakes according to the instructions relating to another type of escalator. Thus, from December 1981 until the day of the disaster, an accident could threaten any of the station's escalators.
The technical inspection of the fourth escalator was carried out two days before the tragedy. According to his act, the results were satisfactory. The crash was caused by the broken stage N26. after it passed through the lower comb, the protection system worked, turning off the electric motor. The service brake, due to an incorrect setting, could not stop the movement of the staircase, and the emergency brake did not turn on, since the speed of this movement did not reach the appropriate value.
To be considered the best in the world
Much earlier, experts of the Moscow Metro, who were conducting an internal investigation, came to the same conclusions. In their opinion, it was necessary to immediately check all the escalators of the new ET series, which were recently installed at many stations - including at all (then there were six) belonging to the Kalinin radius, opened in 1979 on the eve of the Olympics. The head of the Moscow Metro, Yuri Senyushkin, sent a letter to the city committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the executive committee of the Moscow City Council with a request to urgently close the Kalininsky radius and several other stations for checking the escalators.
But the city authorities allowed to temporarily close only the Aviamotornaya station, which was done. From May 12 to May 28, 1982, the installation of new escalators was carried out. People worked around the clock, seven days a week, in three shifts of 70 people, free hot meals were organized for them.
At other stations, the repair of ET series escalators was carried out gradually. The fasteners of the steps were strengthened, the brakes were modernized, the on and off circuits were changed. The plastic covering of the balustrades was replaced with a similar one, but 8-10 millimeters thick.
The tragic experience was not in vain. People paid with their lives to improve the safety of passengers on all metro systems in the country.
Source: "Secrets of the XX century"
