Train accident 1989 at 1710 km. The worst disaster in the USSR

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 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.

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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 passenger trains were passing there - “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.

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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. There were 50 in the other carriage Chelyabinsk schoolchildren who were traveling to Moldova to pick cherries. 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. High pressure gas flowed through a pipe with a diameter of 700 mm. 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, overcoming 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.

The explosion occurred when two passenger trains Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk passed in close proximity to the site of the pipeline rupture. 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 weather conditions, gas accumulated in the lowland, along which 900 meters there is a historical passage from the pipeline Trans-Siberian Railway, section Ulu-Telyak - Asha of the Kuibyshev Railway, 1710th kilometer of the route, 11 kilometers from Asha station, on the territory of the Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

About 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 a meter-long 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 out of the window of a passing train or sparking between the contact network and pantographs of an electric locomotive.
Drivers of passing trains warned the train dispatcher of the section that there was heavy gas pollution on the section, but he did not attach any importance to this.
On June 4, 1989 at 01:15 local time (June 3 at 23:15 Moscow time), when two passenger trains met, a powerful volumetric gas explosion thundered and a gigantic fire broke out.
Trains No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler (20 cars) and No. 212 Adler - Novosibirsk (18 cars) carried 1,284 passengers, including 383 children. In addition, 86 members of train and locomotive crews. People went on vacation to the south, others returned back.
The shock wave threw 11 cars off the tracks; during the explosion, they were extremely deformed and burned almost down to the frame structures. The other 26 cars remained in various positions within the gravel bed, but were also deformed in the explosion and burned out.
According to official data, 573 people died, according to other sources, 690. 623 people became disabled, receiving severe burns and injuries. There were 181 children among the dead. The remains of 327 people have not been identified. These remains, mostly ashes, are buried at the base of the monument.
THROUGH THE EYES OF AN EYEWITNESS:
- I was woken up, and I was just laying 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 carry them closer to the road 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. He handed it to a doctor he knew: “Let’s bandage it!” He replies: “Valerka, it’s all over now...” - “How is that all, I was just talking?!” - "It's shocking."
Then volunteers began arriving from Asha in buses and trucks. The victims had to be transported to the Asha hospital in the backs of KamAZ trucks, no matter how many were transported alive. Many children, seeing the rescuers, crawled further into the forest and hid, driven by horror. We had to look for them in order to save them. There are also eyewitnesses to the tragedy. Few people know about them. High school students from Asha schools. They held training camps for the initial military training. We lived in tents very close to the explosion site, fortunately, on the other side of Snake Mountain. They were also among the first to get involved in rescue efforts. Need I say which one? psychological trauma these guys got a lifetime from what they saw!

On the evening of June 3, 1989 in Bashkortostan, near 1710 km. During the Asha – Ulu-Telyak section (Ufa-Chelyabinsk section), a 700 mm diameter pipe of the Western Siberia – Ural – Volga region high-pressure product pipeline ruptured. The gaseous mixture of NGLs (broad fractions of light hydrocarbons) escaping from the damage site evaporated and mixed with air. The cloud of vapor, being heavier than air, flowed into depressions in the relief and at night reached the bed of the main electrified railway.
The Western Siberia - Ural - Volga region product pipeline, 1,800 km long, began operation in 1985. Even during the design and construction, certain shortcomings were identified that were not seriously taken into account during the operation of the product pipeline. The product pipeline with a diameter of 700 mm was designed for a pressure of 84 atm, and was operated in a mode of 36-38 atm. The automatic pressure regulator at the pumping station, located 200 km from the leak site, was set to turn off when the pressure increased to 39 atm. and when it decreases to 28 atm. According to the technical design, pressure measurements in the pipeline route were recorded at least every 90 minutes, which greatly contributed to the scale of the leak.

At night, at 1 hour 14 minutes local time on June 4, 1989, when two oncoming trains, No. 211 Novosibirsk-Adler and No. 212 Adler-Novosibirsk, passed along the 1710th kilometer, an explosion of the accumulated mixture occurred from a spark from the current collector of the electric locomotive. The force of the explosion was approximately 300 tons of TNT. According to official data, the trains carried 1,284 passengers (including 383 children) and 86 members of train and locomotive crews. It was difficult to establish the true number of people in the carriages, since among the passengers there were children under 5 years old, for whom tickets were not taken.

The explosion destroyed 37 cars and 2 electric locomotives, of which 7 cars burned completely, 26 burned out from the inside, 11 cars were torn off and thrown off the tracks by the shock wave. 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 rail-sleeper grid, 3000 m of the contact network, 1500 m of the longitudinal power supply line were destroyed over 250 m. 1700 m of automatic blocking signal line, 30 contact network supports. The length of the flame front was 1500-2000 m. The glow was visible for tens of kilometers.
A fire could occur simultaneously in all cars, but with varying intensity. A short-term rise in temperature in the area of ​​the explosion reached more than 1000°C - this can be judged by the melted gold dental crown of a woman who was in a hospital in Ufa with severe burns (the melting point of gold is 1242°C). Clothes worn by people rotted from the heat without igniting; synthetic clothing melted and evaporated.

The young team of Sergei Stolyarov made three trips on an electric locomotive with wounded people. At the Ulu-Telyak station, their freight train allowed express number 212 to pass and followed it. A few kilometers later we saw an explosion and flames. Having assessed the situation, they uncoupled and secured the cars and began to drive the electric locomotive to the site of the disaster. The contact network was broken, but the slope from the disaster site was towards Ulu-Telyak, and it was possible to accelerate, get almost to the rubble, and then simply roll back to the area with the contact wire intact. Having taken the burned people into the cabin, Stolyarov moved back, unloaded them in a safe place and returned again to the 1710th kilometer. He picked up children, women, men who had become helpless and loaded, loaded...

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 were killed and 623 were injured.

A few years later, a monument was erected at the site of the tragedy. All around are neat rows of pine trees of the same 20-year age - the old forest burned down on the night of the disaster. The Bashkir branch of the Kuibyshev Railway built a new stopping point - platform 1710 kilometers. Now all trains traveling from Ufa to Asha, Simskaya and Kropachevo make a stop here. Surprisingly, this saved several more lives - previously, residents of a village located three kilometers away used to take the train along sleepers to the nearest platform 1712 km away, sometimes getting hit by a train on a small radius curve where visibility is very limited. Now they are using a new platform.

At the foot of the monument lie several route boards from the cars of the Adler-Novosibirsk train. Following strictly according to the schedule, these trains never met on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section. The delay of train No. 212 for technical reasons and the stop of train No. 211 at the intermediate station to disembark a woman who had begun giving birth led two passenger trains to this place at the same time on the fateful night...

Route boards.

Monument.

From the first days of its existence, the railway became a source of increased danger. Trains hit people, collide with each other and derail. However, on the night of June 3-4, 1989, a train accident occurred near Ufa, the likes of which had no analogues in either Russian or world history. However, then the cause of the accident was not the actions of railway workers, nor damage to the tracks, but something completely different, far from the railway - an explosion of gas leaking from a pipeline passing nearby.

Object: 1710 kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway, section Asha - Ulu-Telyak, Kuibyshev Railway, 11 km from Asha station, Iglinsky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. 900 meters from the Siberia-Ural-Volga region product pipeline (pipeline).

Victims: killed - 575 people (258 at the scene of the accident, 317 in hospitals), injured - 623 people. According to other sources, 645 people died

Causes of the disaster

We know exactly what caused the train accident near Ufa on June 4, 1989 - a massive explosion of gas that leaked from the pipeline through a 1.7-meter-long crack and accumulated in the lowland along which the Trans-Siberian Railway passes. However, no one will say why the gas mixture flared up, and there is still debate about what led to the formation of a crack in the pipe and a gas leak.

As for the immediate cause of the explosion, the gas could have flared up from an accidental spark that slipped between the pantograph and the contact wire, or in any other component of the electric locomotives. But it is possible that the gas exploded from a cigarette (after all, there were many smokers on the train with 1284 passengers, and some of them could have gone out to smoke at one in the morning), but most experts are inclined to the “spark” version.

As for the reasons for gas leaks from the pipeline, everything is much more complicated. According to the official version, the pipeline was a “time bomb” - it was damaged by an excavator bucket during construction in October 1985, and under the influence of constant loads, a crack appeared at the damage site. According to this version, a crack in the pipeline opened just 40 minutes before the accident, and during this time quite a lot of gas accumulated in the lowland.

Since this version became official, the pipeline builders - several officials, foremen and workers (seven people in total) - were found guilty of the accident.

According to another version, the gas leak began much earlier - two to three weeks before the disaster. First, a microfistula appeared in the pipe - a small hole through which gas began to leak. Gradually the hole widened and grew into a long crack. The appearance of the fistula is probably caused by corrosion resulting from an electrochemical reaction under the influence of “stray currents” from the railway.

It is impossible not to note several other factors that are in one way or another connected with the occurrence emergency situation. First of all, standards were violated during the construction and operation of the pipeline. Initially, it was conceived as an oil pipeline with a diameter of 750 mm, but later, when the pipeline was actually built, it was repurposed as a product pipeline for transporting liquefied gas-gasoline mixture. This could not be done, since the operation of product pipelines with a diameter of over 400 mm is prohibited by all regulations. However, this was ignored.

According to experts, this terrible accident could have been avoided. A few days later, drivers of locomotives passing along this stretch reported increased gas pollution, but these messages were ignored. Also, on this section of the pipeline, a few hours before the accident, the gas pressure dropped, but the problem was solved simply by increasing the gas supply, which, as is now clear, only worsened the situation. As a result, no one found out about the leak, and soon there was an explosion.

It’s interesting that there is also a conspiracy theory about the causes of the disaster (where would we be without it!). Some “experts” claim that the explosion was nothing more than a sabotage by American intelligence services. And this was one of the accidents that was part of the secret American program for the collapse of the USSR. This version does not stand up to criticism, but it turned out to be very “tenacious” and today it has many supporters.

A lot of shortcomings, ignoring technical problems, bureaucracy and basic negligence - these are the true reasons for the train accident near Ufa on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Chronicle of events

The chronicle of events can begin from the moment when the driver of one of the trains passing along the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section reported increased gas pollution, which, in his opinion, posed a danger. It was approximately ten o'clock in the evening local time. However, the message was either ignored by dispatchers, or simply did not have time to reach the responsible officials.

At 1:14 local time, two trains met in a lowland filled with a “gas lake” and an explosion occurred. It was not just an explosion, but a volumetric explosion, which, as is known, is the most destructive type of chemical explosion. The gas ignited in its entire volume at once, and in this fireball the temperature momentarily rose to 1000 degrees, and the length of the flame front reached almost 2 kilometers.

The disaster occurred in the taiga, far from large settlements and roads, so help could not come quickly. The first to come to the scene of the accident were the residents of the village of Asha, located 11 km away, the residents of Asha and subsequently played big role in rescuing victims - they looked after the sick and generally provided all possible assistance.

A few hours later, rescuers began to arrive at the scene of the disaster - the first to begin work were the soldiers of the civil defense battalion, and then the rescue train crews joined them. The military evacuated the victims, cleared away the rubble, and restored the tracks. The work went quickly (fortunately, in early June the nights are light and dawn comes early), and by morning the only evidence of the accident was the scorched forest within a kilometer radius and scattered carriages. All the victims were taken to Ufa hospitals, and the remains of the victims were recovered during the day on June 4 and transported by car to Ufa morgues.

The work to restore the tracks (after all, this is the Trans-Siberian Railway, stopping it for a long time is fraught with the most serious problems) was completed in a few days. But for many more days and weeks, doctors fought for the lives of seriously wounded people, and relatives with tears in their eyes tried to identify their relatives and friends in the burned fragments of the bodies...

Consequences

According to various estimates, the force of the explosion ranged from 250 - 300 (official version) to 12,000 tons of TNT equivalent (recall that the one dropped on Hiroshima atomic bomb had a yield of 16 kilotons).

The glow of this monstrous explosion was visible at a distance of up to 100 km; the shock wave broke glass in many houses in the village of Asha at a distance of 11 km. The explosion destroyed about 350 meters of railway tracks and 3 km of the contact network (30 supports were destroyed and overturned), about 17 km of overhead communication lines were damaged.

Two locomotives and 37 cars were damaged, 11 cars were thrown off the tracks. Almost all the carriages were burned out, many of them were crushed, some of the carriages were missing their roofs and trim. And several carriages were bent like bananas - it is difficult to imagine how powerful the explosion was to throw multi-ton carriages off the road in an instant and thus cripple them.

The explosion started a fire that engulfed an area of ​​over 250 hectares.

The ill-fated pipeline was also damaged. The decision was made not to restore it, and it was soon liquidated.

The explosion claimed 575 lives, 181 of them children. Another 623 people were seriously injured and remained disabled in various categories. 258 people died on the spot, but no one can claim that these are exact numbers: people were literally torn apart by the explosion, their bodies mixed with earth and twisted metal, and most of the discovered remains were not bodies, but only mutilated fragments of bodies. And no one knows how many dead remained under the hastily restored railway track.

Another 317 people died in hospitals in the days following the accident. Many people suffered burns over 100% of the body, fractures and other injuries (including traumatic amputation of limbs), and therefore simply had no chance of survival.

Current situation

Today, in the place where 24 years ago there was a monstrous explosion, there is taiga and silence, broken by passing freight and passenger trains. However, electric trains traveling from Ufa to Asha do not just pass by - they certainly stop at the “1710th kilometer” platform, built here a few years after the disaster.

In 1992, a memorial was erected next to the platform in memory of the victims of the disaster. At the foot of this eight-meter-tall monument you can see several road signs that were torn off the carriages during the explosion.

Warn and prevent

One of the causes of the disaster was a violation of operating standards for product pipelines - there were no leakage monitoring sensors on the pipe, and no visual inspection was carried out by linemen. But something else was more dangerous: along its length the pipeline had 14 dangerous approaches (less than 1 kilometer) and intersections with railway and highways. The problematic pipeline was dismantled, but the problem was not solved - tens of thousands of kilometers of pipelines were laid in the country, and it is impossible to keep track of every meter of these pipes.

However, real steps to prevent similar disasters in the future were made 15 years after the accident: in 2004, on the instructions of OJSC Gazprom, a system for monitoring the crossings of main pipelines across roads (SKP 21) was developed, which has been implemented on the roads since 2005. pipelines of Russia.

And now we can only hope that modern automation will prevent a catastrophe like the Ufa one from happening again.

The train accident near Ufa at the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which happened on June 4, 1989, became one of the largest in the entire history of the USSR. The gas explosion claimed hundreds of lives and left hundreds more disabled. How did all this happen?

Coincidence of circumstances

At 19:03 Moscow time, fast train No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler departed from Chelyabinsk, where a carriage was attached to it, in which students of Chelyabinsk school No. 107 were traveling, as well as the youth hockey team "Tractor 73".

At 23:41, fast train No. 212 Adler – Novosibirsk left Ufa. At 0:51, train No. 211 arrived at Asha station. At 1:05 am, ambulance No. 212 proceeded through the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section along a side track.

At 22:00, the dispatcher received a warning that a strong odor of gas could be felt in the area of ​​the Siberia-Ural-Olzhye pipeline at the 1710th kilometer. At 1:07 a.m., flammable hydrocarbons began to seep through a crack in the 1.7-meter-long pipe and accumulate in the depression through which they ran. railway tracks. At 1:13 two oncoming trains entered a dense cloud of gas. The total area of ​​the gas contaminated zone was about 250 hectares.

Chronicle of the disaster

At 1:14 there was an explosion and a fire started. Since the contact network lost voltage, the railway signaling system failed. The power of the explosion, according to experts, was equivalent to 250-300 tons of trinitrotoluene.

Two locomotives and 37 cars were damaged, and 11 cars were thrown off the tracks. Almost all of them were burnt out, many were flattened and twisted...

The fiery glow could be seen tens of kilometers away. Volunteers from among local residents, ambulances, rescuers, fire crews were sent...

By 7 a.m., all survivors had already been taken to nearby hospitals. The heaviest ones were transported by helicopter to Ufa, Chelyabinsk and others major cities. A cordon was set up around the explosion site.

People began to contact hospitals looking for their loved ones who were traveling on the burnt train. Some of the wounded could not even say their names; many names and surnames were written down with errors. Sometimes a person was included in the lists of the living, and later it turned out that he was dead... People often died from burns while already in hospitals.

As for the dead, many bodies were simply scattered into fragments. The military was forced to literally sift through the ground at the accident site to find the remains.

By 16:00, the fire was finally completely extinguished and work began on restoring the railway track. By 21:00, new rails were laid along the damaged section, and trains began running on the Asha-Ulu-Telyak section again.

According to various estimates, from 575 to 645 people died in this tragedy, including 181 children. 623 people were injured.

Reasons and versions

There is still debate about the cause of the explosion. Perhaps it was an accidental electrical spark. Or maybe someone’s cigarette acted as a detonator, because one of the passengers could well have gone out at night to smoke...

But how did the gas leak occur? According to the official version, during construction in October 1985, the pipeline was damaged by an excavator bucket. At first it was just corrosion, but over time a crack appeared due to constant loads. It opened only 40 minutes before the accident, and by the time the trains passed through the lowland, a sufficient amount of gas had already accumulated.

In any case, it was the pipeline builders who were found guilty of the accident. Seven people were held responsible, including officials, foremen and workers.

But there is another version, according to which the leak occurred two to three weeks before the disaster. Apparently, under the influence of “stray currents” from the railway, an electrochemical reaction began in the pipe, which led to corrosion. First, a small hole formed through which gas began to leak. Gradually it expanded into a crack.

By the way, drivers of trains passing this section reported about gas pollution several days before the accident. A few hours before, the pressure in the pipeline dropped, but the problem was solved simply - they increased the gas supply, which further aggravated the situation.

So, most likely, the main cause of the tragedy was elementary negligence, the usual Russian hope for “maybe”...

They did not restore the pipeline. It was subsequently liquidated. And at the site of the Ashinsky disaster in 1992, a memorial was erected. Every year, relatives of the victims come here to honor their memory.