Train accident near Ufa- the largest in the history of Russia and the USSR (except for the crash at the Vereshchevka station in 1944, about which only fragmentary information is available) train accident, which occurred on June 4 (June 3, Moscow time) 1989 in the Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 11 km from the city of Asha (Chelyabinsk region) on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak stretch. At the moment of the oncoming passage of two passenger trains No. 211 “Novosibirsk - Adler” and No. 212 “Adler - Novosibirsk”, a powerful explosion of a cloud of light hydrocarbons occurred as a result of an accident on the nearby Siberia - Ural - Volga region pipeline. 575 people were killed (according to other sources 645), 181 of them were children, more than 600 were injured.
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On the product pipeline " Western Siberia- Ural - Volga region", through which a wide fraction of light hydrocarbons (liquefied gas-gasoline mixture) was transported, formed narrow gap 1.7 m long. Due to pipeline leakage and special weather conditions gas accumulated in the lowland along which the Trans-Siberian Railway passed 900 m from the pipeline, the stage Ulu-Telyak - Asha Kuibyshevskaya railway, 1710th kilometer of the highway, 11 km from Asha station, on the territory of the Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Approximately three hours before the disaster, instruments showed a drop in pressure in the pipeline. However, instead of looking for a leak, the duty personnel only increased the gas supply to restore pressure. As a result of these actions, a significant amount of propane, butane and other flammable hydrocarbons leaked out through an almost two-meter crack in the pipe under pressure, which accumulated in the lowland in the form of a “gas lake.” The ignition of the gas mixture could have occurred from an accidental spark or a cigarette thrown from the window of a passing train.
The drivers of passing trains warned the train dispatcher of the section that there was heavy gas pollution on the stretch, but they did not attach any importance to this.
The force of the explosion was such that the shock wave broke glass in the city of Asha, located more than 10 km from the scene of the incident. The column of flame was visible more than 100 km away. 350 m of railway tracks destroyed, 17 km air lines communications. The fire caused by the explosion covered an area of about 250 hectares.
The explosion damaged 37 cars and 2 electric locomotives, of which 7 cars were to the point of exclusion from inventory, 26 were burned out from the inside. The impact of the shock wave led to the derailment of 11 cars. An open longitudinal crack with a width of 4 to 40 cm and a length of 300 m formed on the slope of the roadbed, causing the slope part of the embankment to slide down to 70 cm. The following were destroyed and put out of action: the rail-sleeper grid - for 250 m; contact network - over 3000 m; longitudinal power supply line - for 1500 m; automatic blocking signal line - 1700 m; 30 contact network supports. The length of the flame front was 1500-2000 m. A short-term rise in temperature in the explosion area reached more than 1000 °C. The glow was visible for tens of kilometers.
The crash site is located in a remote, sparsely populated area. Providing assistance was very difficult due to this circumstance. 258 corpses were found at the site, 806 people received burns and injuries of varying severity, of which 317 died in hospitals. A total of 575 people died and 623 were injured.
After the accident near Asha, the pipeline was not restored and was liquidated.
The official version claims that the gas leak from the product pipeline was possible due to damage caused to it by an excavator bucket during its construction in October 1985, four years before the disaster. The leak began 40 minutes before the explosion.
According to another version, the cause of the accident was the corrosive effect on the outer part of the pipe of electric leakage currents, the so-called “stray currents” of the railway. 2-3 weeks before the explosion, a microfistula formed, then, as a result of cooling of the pipe, a crack that grew in length appeared at the point of gas expansion. Liquid condensate soaked the soil at the depth of the trench, without coming out, and gradually went down the slope to the railway.
When the two trains met, possibly as a result of braking, a spark occurred, which caused the gas to detonate. But most likely the cause of gas detonation was an accidental spark from under the pantograph of one of the locomotives.
On the afternoon of June 4, the Chairman arrived at the scene of the explosion Supreme Council USSR M. S. Gorbachev and members of the government commission. Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. G. Vedernikov was appointed chairman of the commission to investigate the Ufa explosion. In memory of those killed, a one-day mourning was declared in the country on June 5.
The trial lasted for six years, nine officials were charged, two of them were subject to amnesty. Among the rest are the head of the construction and installation department of the Nefteprovodmontazh trust, foremen, and other specific performers. The charges were brought under Article 215, Part II of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The maximum penalty is five years in prison.
An Association of victims and relatives of those killed near Asha was created.
Gennady Verzyan, resident of Asha (11 kilometers from the explosion):
At two o'clock in the morning local time, a bright glow shot up from the direction of Bashkiria. The column of fire flew up hundreds of meters, then a blast wave came. The roar caused glass to break out in some houses.
Alexey Godok, in 1989, first deputy head of the passenger service of the South Ural Railway:
When we flew over the scene of the accident, it seemed as if some kind of napalm had gone through. The trees were left with black stakes, as if they had been stripped from root to top. The carriages were scattered, scattered...
This must happen - the train that came from Novosibirsk was 7 minutes late. If he had passed on time or if they had met in another place, nothing would have happened. The tragedy is this - at the moment of the meeting, a spark passed from the braking of one of the trains, gas accumulated in the low area and an instant explosion occurred. Rock is rock. And our carelessness, of course...
I worked at the scene of the accident, together with the KGB and the military, studying the causes of the disaster. By the end of the day, June 5, we knew that this was not sabotage at all, it was a wild accident... Indeed, both the residents of a nearby village and our drivers could smell the gas... As an inspection showed, the gas accumulated there for 20-25 days. And all this time there were trains going there! As for the product pipeline, it turned out that there was no control there, despite the fact that the relevant services are obliged to regularly monitor the condition of the pipe. After this disaster, instructions appeared for all our drivers: if they smell gas, they should immediately warn and stop train traffic until the circumstances are clarified. Such a terrible lesson was needed...
Vladislav Zagrebenko, in 1989 - resuscitator at the regional clinical hospital:
At seven in the morning we took off with the first helicopter. It took three hours to fly. They didn’t know where to sit at all. They sat me near the trains. From above I saw (draws) this clearly defined circle with a diameter of about a kilometer, and black stumps of pine trees stick out like matchsticks. There is taiga all around. There are carriages, bent like bananas. There are helicopters there like flies. Hundreds. By that time there were no sick people or corpses left. The military did a perfect job: they evacuated people, took away the corpses, and put out the fire.
The sick were brought in on dump trucks, on trucks side by side: alive, not so alive, not at all alive. They loaded it in the dark. They were sorted according to the principle of military medicine. The seriously wounded - 100 percent of burns - on the grass. There is no time for pain relief, this is the law: if you help one difficult patient, you will lose twenty.
I especially want to say about the Ashino residents. Each patient had a volunteer on duty, but you couldn’t get so many nurses, and there was still a queue to take this place. They carried cutlets, potatoes, everything the wounded asked for... It is known that these patients need to drink a lot. But I couldn’t imagine so many compotes: all the window sills were covered, the entire floor. The area in front of the building was filled with volunteers. All of Asha rose to help.
Salavat Abdulin, father of Lena Abdulina, who died near Asha, co-chairman of the Association of relatives of those killed and injured near Asha:
At the station we were told that the last carriages in which our children were traveling were not damaged. Someone said that teacher Tulupov, who went with them, called and said that everything was fine. They simply reassured us.
At six in the evening we went by special train to Asha, from Asha to Ufa. The daughter was not on the list of living ones. We spent three days searching in hospitals. No traces. And then my wife and I went through the refrigerators...
There was one girl there. She is similar in age to my daughter. There was no head, only two teeth stuck out from below. Black as a frying pan. I thought I would recognize her by her legs, she danced with me, she was a ballerina, but there were no legs up to her torso. And she was similar in body. I then reproached myself, it was possible to tell by my blood type and by my collarbone, which I broke in childhood... In that state it didn’t dawn on me. Or maybe it was her... There are a lot of unidentified “fragments” of people left. […]
24 people from our school were not found at all, 21 people died. 9 people survived. Not a single teacher was found.
Valery Mikheev, deputy editor of the newspaper "Steel Spark", Asha:
I was woken up - and I had just laid down - 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 and away from the fire. Apocalypse... And how many children there were! Paramedics began to arrive after us. We put the living on one side and the dead on the other. I remember carrying a little girl, she kept asking me about her mother. I handed it over to a doctor I know - let’s bandage it! He replies: “Valerka, that’s it already...” - “How is that all, I was just talking?!” - “It’s shocking.”
When two trains - “Novosibirsk-Adler" and "Adler-Novosibirsk" - were passing nearby, the gas that had accumulated in the lowland exploded. According to official data, 575 people were killed. A quarter of a century later, eyewitnesses of the tragedy remember this day.
MET YOUR FUTURE WIFE IN THE HOSPITAL
Sergei Vasiliev was 18 in 1989. He worked as an assistant driver of the Novosibirsk-Adler train. After the events near Ulu-Telyaq he was awarded the Order “For Personal Courage”:
In three days I had to go to the army. Perhaps I would have been sent to Afghanistan. At least that's what I thought. There was no foreboding of trouble that day. We rested in Ust-Katav, hitched the train and returned home. The only thing I noticed was the bad fog that was spreading across the ground.
After the explosion, I woke up on the floor, and everything was burning there. The driver was pinned in the cab. I started to pull him out, and he was a healthy, heavy man. As I later found out, he died in the hospital on the sixth day. As soon as I pulled it out, I saw that the door was blocked by bars - I somehow managed to get it out.
We got out. I thought my driver wouldn’t be able to get up - he was all burned, he could barely move... But he got up and walked away! State of shock. I had 80% burns, all that was left on my body were shoulder straps, a belt and sneakers without soles.
In one of the carriages, a grandmother and five grandchildren were going to the sea to relax. She hits the window, she can’t break it - double. I helped her, broke the glass with a stone, she gave me three grandchildren. Three survived, and two died there... My grandmother also remained alive, she later found me in the hospital in Sverdlovsk.
The first thing I thought then was that the war had begun, that it was a bombing. When I found out that the cause of the explosion was someone’s negligence, I was so angry... It hasn’t let me go for 25 years. I spent almost three months in the hospital, where they pieced me together again, piece by piece. It was in the hospital that he met his future wife. Then he tried to work again as an assistant driver. I was able to endure it for a year: as soon as the train approached this place, my blood pressure immediately jumped. I couldn't. He transferred and became an inspector. That's how I still work.
“A PILE OF ASH, AND IN THE MIDDLE IS A TIE CLIP. THERE WAS A SOLDIER"
The district police officer of the Krasny Voskhod village, Anatoly Bezrukov, was 25. He saved seven people from burning cars and helped take the victims to hospitals.
First there was one explosion, then a second. If there is a hell, then it was there: you climb out of the darkness onto this embankment, there is a fire in front of you and people are crawling out of it. I saw a man burning with a blue flame, the skin hanging on his body in rags, a woman on a branch with her stomach ripped open. And the next day I went to the site for work and began collecting material evidence. Here lies the ashes, all that’s left of the man, and in the middle there’s a shiny pin from a tie—that means there was a soldier. I wasn't even afraid. No one could be more afraid than those who traveled on these trains. There was a smell of burning there for a very long time...
“A LOT OF PEOPLE – AND EVERYONE IS ASKING FOR HELP”
Krasny Voskhod resident Marat Yusupov is now 56 years old. On the day of the disaster, Marat saved four people from the carriage and loaded the cars with “severe” victims.
There was no forest left at all around these trains, but it was dense. All the trees fell down, just black stumps. The earth was scorched to the ground. I remember many, many people, everyone asking for help, complaining about the cold, although it was warm outside. They took off all their clothes and gave them to them. I was the first to carry a little girl, I don’t know if she’s alive...
RED GAZERBOARDS AT THE SITE OF BURNED CARS
Sergey Kosmatkov, head of the Krasny Voskhod village council:
Everyone says that there were 575 dead, in fact - 651. They just couldn’t identify them, only ashes and bones remained. Two days after the fire, workers came to lay new rails directly on the remains. People then stood up like a wall, collected everything in bags and buried it right next to the tracks. And three years later we erected an obelisk here. It symbolizes two melted rails and at the same time a female profile. There are also bright red gazebos near the road. They were installed in places where completely burnt cars lay. Relatives gather there and remember.
HOW IT WAS
Important facts about the disaster
✔ On the night of June 4, 1989, at the 1710th kilometer of the Asha-Ulu-Telyak section, almost on the border with the Chelyabinsk region, two trains met: Novosibirsk-Adler and Adler-Novosibirsk. The explosion occurred at 01.14 - multi-ton carriages were scattered through the forest like splinters. Of the 37 cars, seven burned completely, 26 burned out from the inside, 11 were torn off and thrown off the tracks.
✔ This meeting should not have happened. But one train was late due to technical problems, and a woman who began to give birth was disembarked from the second.
✔ According to official data, there were 1,284 people on two trains, but in those years names were not written on tickets, “hares” easily infiltrated, children under five years old traveled without tickets at all. Therefore, there were most likely more people. The lists of the dead often contain the same names - families were traveling on vacation and back.
✔ There was a gas pipeline at a distance of a kilometer from the railway; it was built four years before the tragedy. And, as it turned out during the investigation, with violations. The gas pipeline ran through a lowland, among the forest, and the railway runs along a high embankment. A crack appeared in the pipe, gas gradually began to accumulate in the valley and creep towards the trains. What served as the detonator is still unknown. Most likely, an accidentally thrown cigarette butt from the vestibule or a spark from under the wheels.
✔ By the way, a year before this incident, there had already been an explosion on this pipe. Several workers died then. But no measures were taken. For the death of 575 people, the “switchmen” - the workers who served the site - were punished. They were given two years in prison.
54.948056 , 57.089722| 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway after the disaster, 1989 | |
| Details | |
| date | June 4, 1989 |
| Time | 01:14 (+2 Moscow time, +5 GMT) |
| Place | stretch Asha - Ulu Telyak in an uninhabited area |
| A country | USSR |
| Railway line |
Trans-Siberian Railway |
| Operator | Kuibyshev Railway |
| Type of incident | crash (largest disaster) |
| Cause | explosion of a gaseous mixture of wide fractions of light hydrocarbons |
| Statistics | |
| Trains | Two oncoming trains No. 211 Novosibirsk-Adler and No. 212 Adler-Novosibirsk |
| Number of passengers | 1,284 passengers (including 383 children) and 86 members of train and locomotive crews |
| Dead | 575 people exactly (according to other sources 645) |
| Wounded | more than 623 |
| Damage | 12 million 318 thousand Soviet rubles |
Train accident near Ufa- the largest railway accident in the history of Russia and the USSR, which occurred on June 4 (June 3, Moscow time) 1989 in the Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 11 km from the city of Asha (Chelyabinsk region) on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak stretch. At the moment of the oncoming passage of two passenger trains No. 211 “Novosibirsk-Adler” and No. 212 “Adler-Novosibirsk”, a powerful explosion of a cloud of light hydrocarbons occurred as a result of an accident on the nearby Siberia-Ural-Volga region pipeline. 575 people were killed (according to other sources 645), 181 of them were children, more than 600 were injured.
On the pipe of the Western Siberia-Ural-Volga region product pipeline, through which a wide fraction of light hydrocarbons (liquefied gas-gasoline mixture) was transported, a narrow gap 1.7 m long appeared. Due to a pipeline leak and special weather conditions, gas accumulated in the lowland along which the Trans-Siberian Railway ran 900 m from the pipeline, a section Ulu-Telyak - Asha Kuibyshev Railway, 1710th kilometer of the main line, 11 km from Asha station, on the territory of the Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Approximately three hours before the disaster, instruments showed a drop in pressure in the pipeline. However, instead of looking for a leak, the duty personnel only increased the gas supply to restore pressure. As a result of these actions, a significant amount of propane, butane and other flammable hydrocarbons leaked out through an almost two-meter crack in the pipe under pressure, which accumulated in the lowland in the form of a “gas lake.” The ignition of the gas mixture could have occurred from an accidental spark or a cigarette thrown from the window of a passing train.
The drivers of passing trains warned the train dispatcher of the section that there was heavy gas pollution on the stretch, but they did not attach any importance to this.
The force of the explosion was such that the shock wave broke windows in the city of Asha, located more than 10 km from the scene of the incident. The column of flame was visible more than 100 km away. 350 m of railway tracks and 17 km of overhead communication lines were destroyed. The fire caused by the explosion covered an area of about 250 hectares.
The explosion damaged 37 cars and 2 electric locomotives, of which 7 cars were to the point of exclusion from inventory, 26 were burned out from the inside. The impact of the shock wave led to the derailment of 11 cars. An open longitudinal crack with a width of 4 to 40 cm and a length of 300 m formed on the slope of the roadbed, causing the slope part of the embankment to slide down to 70 cm. The following were destroyed and put out of action: the rail-sleeper grid - for 250 m; contact network - over 3000 m; longitudinal power supply line - for 1500 m; automatic blocking signal line - 1700 m; 30 contact network supports. The length of the flame front was 1500-2000 m. A short-term rise in temperature in the explosion area reached more than 1000 °C. The glow was visible for tens of kilometers.
The crash site is located in a remote, sparsely populated area. Providing assistance was very difficult due to this circumstance. 258 corpses were found at the site, 806 people received burns and injuries of varying severity, of which 317 died in hospitals. A total of 575 people died and 623 were injured.
During operation from 1989 to 1989, 50 major accidents and failures occurred on the product pipeline, which, however, did not lead to human casualties.
After the accident near Asha, the product pipeline was not restored and was liquidated.
The official version claims that the gas leak from the product pipeline was possible due to damage caused to it by an excavator bucket during its construction in October 1985, four years before the disaster. The leak began 40 minutes before the explosion.
According to another version, the cause of the accident was the corrosive effect on the outer part of the pipe of electric leakage currents, the so-called “stray currents” of the railway. 2-3 weeks before the explosion, a microfistula formed, then, as a result of cooling of the pipe, a crack that grew in length appeared at the point of gas expansion. Liquid condensate soaked the soil at the depth of the trench, without coming out, and gradually went down the slope to the railway.
When the two trains met, possibly as a result of braking, a spark occurred, which caused the gas to detonate. But most likely the cause of gas detonation was an accidental spark from under the pantograph of one of the locomotives.
The trial lasted for six years, nine officials were charged, two of them were subject to amnesty. Among the rest are the head of the construction and installation department of the Nefteprovodmontazh trust, foremen, and other specific performers. The charges were brought under Article 215, Part II of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The maximum penalty is five years in prison.
An Association of victims and relatives of those killed near Asha was created.
At two o'clock in the morning local time, a bright glow shot up from the direction of Bashkiria. The column of fire flew up hundreds of meters, then a blast wave came. The roar caused glass to break out in some houses.
Svetlana Shevchenko, head teacher of educational work at school 107:
Our boys did not sleep that night. It was the first evening, they joked and chatted. Our teacher Irina Mikhailovna Strelnikova was just walking around the carriage and said: “Guys, it’s already one in the morning, and you’re still not sleeping...”. And they were placed on the third shelves; they all wanted to travel in the same compartment. When it crashed, the roof was blown off - they were thrown out. This saved them.
Alexey Godok, in 1989, first deputy head of the passenger service of the South Ural Railway:
When we flew over the scene of the accident, it seemed as if some kind of napalm had gone through. The trees were left with black stakes, as if they had been stripped from root to top. The carriages were scattered, scattered...
This must happen - the train that came from Novosibirsk was 7 minutes late. If he had passed on time or if they had met in another place, nothing would have happened. The tragedy is this - at the moment of the meeting, a spark passed from the braking of one of the trains, gas accumulated in the low area and an instant explosion occurred. Rock is rock. And our carelessness, of course...
I worked at the scene of the accident, together with the KGB and the military, studying the causes of the disaster. By the end of the day, June 5, we knew that this was not sabotage, it was a wild accident... Indeed, the smell of gas was felt by both the residents of a nearby village and our drivers... As an inspection showed, the gas accumulated there for 20-25 days. And all this time there were trains going there! As for the product pipeline, it turned out that there was no control there, despite the fact that the relevant services are obliged to regularly monitor the condition of the pipe. After this disaster, instructions appeared for all our drivers: if they smell gas, they should immediately warn and stop train traffic until the circumstances are clarified. Such a terrible lesson was needed...
Vladislav Zagrebenko, in 1989 - resuscitator at the regional clinical hospital:
At seven in the morning we took off with the first helicopter. It took three hours to fly. They didn’t know where to sit at all. They sat me near the trains. From above I saw (draws) such a clearly defined circle with a diameter of about a kilometer, and black stumps of pine trees stick out like matchsticks. Around the taiga. The carriages lie bent in the shape of a banana. There are helicopters there like flies. Hundreds. By that time there were no sick people or corpses left. The military did a perfect job: they evacuated people, took away the corpses, and put out the fire.
There was one girl there. She is similar in age to my daughter. There was no head, only two teeth stuck out from below. Black as a frying pan. I thought I would recognize her by her legs, she danced with me, she was a ballerina, but there were no legs up to her torso. And she was similar in body. I then reproached myself, it was possible to tell by my blood type and by my collarbone, which I broke in childhood... In that state it didn’t dawn on me. Or maybe it was her... There are a lot of unidentified “fragments” of people left.
The investigation into this case was conducted by the Union Prosecutor's Office, and from the very beginning the investigation came to the attention of very eminent persons: the leaders of the industry design institute, who approved the project with violations, Dongaryan, the Deputy Minister oil industry, who, by his instructions, in order to save money, canceled telemetry - devices that monitor the operation of the entire highway. I saw this document with his signature. Previously, there was a helicopter that flew over the entire route, but that was also canceled. There was a lineman - the lineman was also removed, also to save money. And then for some reason the investigation switched to the builders: they installed it incorrectly, they are to blame for everything. This product pipeline was built by the Ufa department “Nefteprovodmontazh”. At first, the leaders were brought in, and then they were given an amnesty, since they were order bearers, and they were only present as witnesses. And 7 people were accused of everything: the head of the site, the foreman... "
In June 1989, the largest train accident occurred. Two trains collided on the Ufa-Chelyabinsk section. As a result, 575 people were killed (181 of them children) and another 600 people were injured.
At approximately 00:30 am local time, a powerful explosion was heard near the village of Ulu-Telyak - and a column of fire rose 1.5-2 kilometers upward. The glow was visible 100 kilometers away. IN village houses glass flew out of the windows. The blast wave felled the impenetrable taiga along the railway at a distance of three kilometers. Hundred-year-old trees burned like big matches.
A day later, I flew in a helicopter over the scene of the disaster, and saw a huge black spot, like a napalm-scorched spot, more than a kilometer in diameter, in the center of which lay carriages twisted by the explosion.
... 
According to experts, the equivalent of the explosion was about 300 tons of TNT, and the power was comparable to the explosion in Hiroshima - 12 kilotons. At that moment two people were passing by passenger trains- “Novosibirsk-Adler” and “Adler-Novosibirsk”. All passengers traveling to Adler were already looking forward to a vacation on the Black Sea. Those who were returning from vacation were coming to meet them. The explosion destroyed 38 cars and two electric locomotives. The blast wave threw another 14 cars off the tracks downhill, “tying” 350 meters of tracks into knots.
... 
As eyewitnesses said, dozens of people thrown out of trains by the explosion rushed along the railway like living torches. Entire families died. The temperature was hellish - the victims still wore melted gold jewelry (and the melting point of gold is above 1000 degrees). In the fiery cauldron, people evaporated and turned into ashes. Subsequently, it was not possible to identify everyone; the dead were so burned that it was impossible to determine whether they were a man or a woman. Almost a third of the dead were buried unidentified.
In one of the carriages were young hockey players from Chelyabinsk “Traktor” (team born in 1973) - candidates for the USSR youth team. Ten guys went on vacation. Nine of them died. In another carriage there were 50 Chelyabinsk schoolchildren who were going to pick cherries in Moldova. The children were fast asleep when the explosion occurred, and only nine people remained unharmed. None of the teachers survived.
What actually happened at kilometer 1710? The Siberia - Ural - Volga gas pipeline ran near the railway. Gas flowed through a pipe with a diameter of 700 mm high pressure. A gas leak occurred from a rupture in the main (about two meters), which spilled onto the ground, filling two large hollows - from the adjacent forest to the railway. As it turned out, the gas leak began there a long time ago; the explosive mixture accumulated for almost a month. Local residents and drivers of passing trains spoke about this more than once - the smell of gas could be felt 8 kilometers away. One of the drivers of the “resort” train also reported the smell on the same day. These were his last words. According to the schedule, the trains were supposed to pass each other in another place, but the train heading to Adler was 7 minutes late. The driver had to stop at one of the stations, where the conductors handed over to the waiting doctors a woman who had gone into premature labor. And then one of the trains, descending into the lowland, slowed down, and sparks flew from under the wheels. So both trains flew into a deadly gas cloud, which exploded.
By some miracle, having overcome the impassability, two hours later 100 medical and nursing teams, 138 ambulances, three helicopters arrived at the scene of the tragedy, 14 ambulance teams, 42 ambulance squads worked, and then just trucks and dump trucks evacuated the injured passengers. They were brought “side by side” - alive, wounded, dead. There was no time to figure it out; they loaded it in pitch darkness and haste. First of all, those who could be saved were sent to hospitals.
People with 100% burns were left behind - by helping one such hopeless person, you could lose twenty people who had a chance to survive. Hospitals in Ufa and Asha, which received the main load, were overcrowded. American doctors who came to Ufa to help, seeing the patients of the Burn Center, stated: “no more than 40 percent will survive, these and these do not need to be treated at all.” Our doctors managed to save more than half of those who were already considered doomed.
The investigation into the causes of the disaster was conducted by the USSR Prosecutor's Office. It turned out that the pipeline was left virtually unattended. By this time, due to economy or negligence, pipeline overflights were canceled and the position of lineman was abolished. Nine people were eventually charged, with a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. After the trial, which took place on December 26, 1992, the case was sent for a new “investigation.” As a result, only two were convicted: two years with deportation outside of Ufa. The trial, which lasted 6 years, consisted of two hundred volumes of testimony from people involved in the construction of the gas pipeline. But it all ended with the punishment of the “switchmen”.
An eight-meter memorial was built near the site of the disaster. The names of 575 victims are engraved on the granite slab. Here, 327 urns with ashes rest. Pine trees have grown around the memorial for 28 years - in the place of the previous ones that died. The Bashkir branch of the Kuibyshev Railway built a new stopping point - “Platform 1710 kilometer”. All trains going from Ufa to Asha make a stop here. At the foot of the monument lie several route boards from the cars of the Adler - Novosibirsk train.
27 years ago, one of the worst railway accidents occurred at 1710 km of the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to various estimates, the tragedy claimed the lives of 575 to 645 people, among them 181 children, 623 people were left disabled. AiF-Chelyabinsk restored the chronology of events and listened to the stories of eyewitnesses.
In 2016, 29 people – friends and relatives of the victims – will travel 1,710 km to the memorial. A special train will take them to the platform.
Fast train No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler departed from Chelyabinsk.
The train arrived in Chelyabinsk an hour and a half late. At the Chelyabinsk-Glavny station, car No. 0, in which students from school No. 107 and the Traktor 73 youth hockey team were traveling, is hitched to the rear of the train, while according to safety regulations, the car with the children should be at the head of the train. The train has a total of 20 carriages.
The train crew of one of the passing trains warns the dispatcher about the smell of gas in the area of 1710 km. The traffic is not stopped; it was decided to deal with the problem in the morning.
Fast train No. 212 Adler - Novosibirsk departs from Ufa. The train was delayed by more than an hour when it arrived in Ufa. Consisting of 17 carriages.
Fast train No. 211 arrives at Asha station. The train traveled to Asha at courier speed, and the delay behind the schedule was only 7 minutes. But here the train stayed longer than expected: one of the little passengers developed a fever.
Fast train No. 212 proceeded to the Ulu-Telyak station along a side track, overtaking a freight train with oil products.
The pressure in the pipeline drops. Under influence high temperature outside (it was thirty degrees Celsius at the time), about 70% of the liquid hydrocarbons that managed to leak out of the pipe turned into a gaseous state. The mixture turned out to be heavier than air, it began to fill the depression.
Two trains enter a dense white cloud. Railway found itself in the very center of a continuous zone of gas contamination ( total area zones of about 250 hectares).
An explosion occurs. Presumably, a spark from the current collector of one of the locomotives leads to detonation of the gas mixture. A fire starts. The voltage disappears from the contact network and the railway alarm goes off. The explosion was so strong that the casing passenger cars scattered over 6 km, glass in houses was broken within a radius of 12 km from the epicenter.
The explosion threw the carriages off the tracks. Photo: Photo from dloadme.net
“My cousin, the same age, was visiting his grandmother in the village of the Criminal Code of the Ashinsky District, about 6-7 km as the crow flies to the site of the tragedy. At the entrance to her house there was an oak door with a powerful forged hook. She always put it on a loop. When the blast wave passed, this hook bent and the door swung open in a split second. My grandmother and my brother jumped up in fright. We were 13 years old at the time,” says AiF reader Alexey.
Local residents begin to come to the aid of passengers. They transport people to Asha in carts, cars, and buses.
A call comes to console 03 of the ambulance service in Ufa: “A carriage is on fire in Ulu-Telyak!” Preparation of places in hospitals in Ufa and Chelyabinsk begins. It soon becomes known that almost the entire crew has burned out. Ambulances have difficulty making their way to the scene of the tragedy, guided by the huge glow of the fire, which can be seen tens of kilometers away.
The first fire crews and ambulances from nearby begin to arrive at the scene of the explosion. settlements. Local residents help doctors dismantle the bodies of the dead and wounded.
Firefighting and recovery trains arrive at 1710 km. But they could not immediately begin repairing the canvas. The fire was still going on all around.
“I lived in Zlatoust, at that time I had just completed my training as an assistant electric locomotive driver and was a freelance correspondent for the newspaper. Early in the morning I was woken up with a request to go to the scene of the disaster and collect information about the Zlatoust residents who were traveling on these trains. The first thing I saw on the spot was a fallen and burnt forest. The smell of burning and ash in the air. I went down the mountain to the railway tracks through this burnt forest. Under the mountain, where the tracks used to be, there was a mess of trains,” recalls Yuri Rusin.
By this time, everyone alive had already been taken to medical institutions Ulu-Telyak station, Ashi, village. Iglino, Katav-Ivanovsk. From there, the heaviest were sent to Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Samara, and Moscow by helicopter. The explosion site has been cordoned off.
It’s difficult to talk about what and how it was there,” says Yuri Rusin. - Helicopters landed and took off constantly. There were a lot of people in hospitals looking for their loved ones. The lists were incomplete and changes were constantly being made. Some victims were unable to say their name, or had difficulty pronouncing it, and doctors wrote it down with errors. But the worst thing was when the person’s data was on the lists of the living, loved ones sighed with relief, and after some time they received the terrible news of death. And at the same time, the military was working at the scene of the accident, sifting the earth to find the remains of human bodies.
There is a call on the radio to donate blood. First of all, those who survived burn disease were accepted; their blood was the most valuable. Doctors recall that the residents of Asha alone donated about 140 liters in the first hours.
There were many children among the victims. Photo: AiF/ Photo by Alexander Firsov
“At that time I was a novice traumatologist; I came to the burn center in March 1989, and in June all this happened. And I had to apply everything that I learned in medical school, practically in combat conditions. This day, June 4, was remembered for the fact that it was very hot, sunny, dry, and the influx of people with injuries was almost three times more than usual. I then worked in the emergency room of hospital No. 6. Usually, if about forty people come for a shift, about 120 people came in that day. When I arrived at the emergency room, I heard that the burn center was being reared up and everyone was being discharged... We realized that some kind of disaster had happened, but nothing specific was known yet. Then it was decided that all burn patients would be collected in one place, and in this seven-story medical building of the 6th hospital they began to vacate all departments and all rooms. Essentially, this entire building was turned into one large burn center,” recalls Mikhail Korostelev, plastic surgeon, combustiologist, doctor of the highest category.
The fire was finally extinguished, all sources were extinguished. Work has begun on restoring the railway track.
New rails were hastily laid. The first trains started running along the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section.
“I spent more than three days at the scene of the tragedy, but I was not tired. At the headquarters at the scene of the disaster I was offered to fly to Chelyabinsk. We flew by two helicopters. One was a girl, the other was a boy, they were evacuated to a burn center. We landed at the airport and there were a lot of ambulances. Unfortunately, one of the children died in the air. Before the helicopter took off, a man approached me and asked me to take an icon with me. big size. I asked him why take her somewhere? The answer was simple: “Just take it, and you’ll figure it out yourself.” This icon was at my home for three months, then something prompted me, and I handed it over to the church under construction in Chrysostom,” - Yuri Rusin says.
A memorial has been erected at the site of the tragedy, where relatives of the victims come every year. Photo: Official website of HC "Traktor"
“I remember a team of English doctors arrived: surgeons, anesthesiologists, psychiatrists. They worked, as they say, to their full potential: they performed operations, participated in rounds, and on duty. They came with their instruments, consumables, even then they had disposable syringes, and we still continued to boil the syringes... For the first 10 days after the disaster, all the doctors in the center worked tirelessly, with a break only for nap. After 10 days I just collapsed and slept for almost a day. Then - back to work. After 10 days, the main crazy fuss ended, the rhythm of work gradually settled down, and all the inspectors left. In August they began to repair the departments in this building, and at the end of September the last victims were discharged,” - Mikhail Korostelev shares his memories.
“About a week or two after the explosion, my parents and I were traveling by train in the morning. It was terribly scary. Hectares of scorched earth. The train stopped and beeped for a long time. It became scary because of the scale of the tragedy. All the people in the carriage fell silent,” our reader Alexey will recall.
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© Photo from the site young.rzd.ru
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© Photo from dloadme.net
© Photo from the site www.chuchotezvous.ru
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
© AiF / Photo by Alexander Firsov
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