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 stress. It opened only about 40 minutes before the accident, and by the time the trains passed through, a sufficient amount of gas had already accumulated in the lowland.
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.
In June 1989, the largest train accident. 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 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.
... 
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 really 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. This has been talked about more than once local residents and drivers of passing trains - 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.
Today we will talk about the largest railway accident near Ufa, on the Asha-Ulu-Telyak section, in 1989.
“The train accident near Ufa is the largest 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 section.
At the moment of the oncoming passage of two passenger trains No. 211 "Novosibirsk - Adler" and No. 212 "Adler - Novosibirsk" there was a powerful explosion of a cloud of light hydrocarbons, formed 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 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.”
People had already gone to bed, many were undressed... the carriages were filled with passengers. There were many children and schoolchildren traveling on the trains. Therefore, after the explosion, many, even the survivors, were undressed... To say that people and children were in a state of shock is to say nothing... The children with 90% of body burns, being in shock, regretted that they had not reached the sea, asked to give something to my mother, they asked where the watch was, what was on my hand, where was the toy... and five minutes later they died. The adults did not understand what was happening, they thought that a war had started, they were bombing, and were hiding in the forest. They were afraid of repeated blows.
Parents considered it lucky, no matter how blasphemous it may sound, if they found the body of a child, because many parents whose children were traveling alone (schoolchildren, teenagers) were given simply fragments of clothes, bodies, or nothing... some never found the missing ones.
Residents of nearby houses set up infirmaries in their houses, glass from houses was broken, walls were splattered with blood, stained with ash, and saturated with smoke. Eyewitnesses say that they swept fingers and fragments of bodies from houses where they were brought by the blast wave. The explosion was so powerful.
In total, 1,284 passengers (including 383 children) and 86 members of train and locomotive crews traveled on the trains.
At least 575 people died (more than 1,000 people were injured - on the platform as well, 623 were left disabled), but it is clear that there were more, since many of the dead remained missing, their ashes scattered in the night air of a random village.
That is, a few of those caught up in that ill-fated tragedy remained safe and relatively unharmed, mainly those who survived received varying degrees of damage and remained disabled.
Eyewitnesses spoke of a black mushroom rising into the sky after the explosion, of scorched forests kilometers away from the disaster... of hundreds of burnt fragments human bodies, about children dying without help.
The main mechanical cause of the explosion was called damage to the gas pipeline by an excavator bucket (as a result of an accumulated cloud of gas and a spark from the close movement of two trains, an explosion occurred), they found the “switchmen”, imprisoned them for a couple of years, then released them on probation...
The personnel on duty, having noticed a decrease in pressure in the gas pipeline several hours before the disaster (even freight train drivers more than once reported to dispatchers about heavy gas pollution in this section), instead of looking for a leak, they increased the pressure even more, and a lot of gas accumulated in the pocket of the section. The fire could have started from a cigarette thrown out the window.
Among the political versions, sabotage and a terrorist attack were again considered, all with the same goals as during the 1988 tragedy in Arzamas (provocations of the West, undermining the country’s authority). After all, it is impossible to believe in mysticism when tragedies occur on the same day a year apart... It is unlikely that this is a coincidence.
But whatever the political goals, the fact of carelessness of the staff on duty and service workers is again obvious. We will never know what exactly was the reason, but the human factor played a fatal role in this tragedy - this is obvious.
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.
Train accident near Ufa on the night of June 3-4, 1989
Object: 1710 kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway, section Asha - Ulu-Telyak, Kuibyshevskaya 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: 575 people were killed (258 at the scene of the accident, 317 in hospitals), 623 people were injured. 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 of an emergency. 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 - that’s real reasons 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.
IN 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 were damaged air lines communications.
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 human lives, of which 181 were 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 remains discovered 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 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.
On the night of June 3–4, 1989, the largest train accident in the history of the USSR and Russia occurred at the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The explosion and fire, which killed over 600 people, are known as the Ashinskaya disaster or the tragedy near Ufa. “AiF-Chelyabinsk” collected stories from people who, 29 years later, still remember what happened as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
“We thought a war had started”
Those who happened to go through the fiery hell and survive remember the terrible moments in detail. For many, these pictures are deeply etched in their memory, even despite their young age. Since 2011, they have been sharing their stories on a page dedicated to the memory of the victims of the disaster.
“When this tragedy happened, I was five years old,” says Tatyana S. “My parents and two brothers and I went to the south to relax, but we didn’t get there. Even though I was little, I remember everything as it is now: the explosion, the flames, the screams, the fear... Thank God, everyone in my family survived, but it’s impossible to forget. We were traveling in the third carriage of train 211, it was night... my dad was in another carriage (he was in the video salon). When the explosion occurred, we thought that a war had begun. Dad somehow ended up on the street and walked, not knowing where - his consciousness became clouded from the explosion - but, as it turned out later, he was walking towards us. We stood in the middle of the compartment and couldn’t get out, everything was dripping (plastic) and everything was burning, we couldn’t break the glass, but then it broke on its own due to the temperature. We saw dad and started shouting to him, he came up, mom threw us (the children) out his window, it was very high, and that’s how we got out. It was very cold, my feet stuck to the ground. Mom took the blanket with her teeth, since her hands were burned, wrapped me up and we walked for several kilometers along the rails, along the bridge on which only trains travel, it was terribly dark. In general, if dad had gone in the other direction, everything would have turned out differently.
We got to some station, locomotives rushed past us at breakneck speed, everyone was in shock, but then we were all evacuated to hospitals. Mom was taken to Kuibyshev, dad to Moscow, brothers to Ufa, and me to Nizhny Novgorod. I have a 20% burn, my mom and dad have my hands, and my brothers are lucky, they have superficial burns. Rehabilitation took a very long time, several years, especially psychologically, because watching people burn alive is not just scary, but terrifying... And this Novosibirsk-Adler route has haunted me all my life, it so happened that my brother went to live to the south and I have to ride this train, and only God knows how my soul turns inside out when I ride it.”
Among others, a man shared his story, who then went south, to the sea, with his wife and little daughter.
“We were traveling in a compartment, a young mother with a boy of 6-8 months and her mother were traveling with us. Neither I nor my daughter heard the explosion; she and I probably shouldn’t have woken up. My wife and daughter slept on the bottom bunk, I on the top. A grandmother with her grandson is on the bottom, a young mother is on the top. I was sleeping on my stomach, and then, as if from a cellar: “Valera, Valera...” I opened my eyes: the compartment was on fire. “Mother of God, where is Olesya?” There are no partitions, I began to scatter the remains of the partitions, the skin on my fingers immediately turned out like on boiled sausages. “Dad, dad...” Found it! Out the window, mom! “Dad, is this war? Are these Germans? Let’s go home quickly...” Grandmother and grandson out the window. "Save Natasha!" Top shelf It broke off with her, sits in the corner, shelf on his head. The chiffon dress melted on her, covered in bubbles. It hurt my hands, I tried with my back, and it burned me on the melting leatherette. Lifts with shelf. He tore out the shelf with his hands, his head was broken, his brain was visible. Somehow through her window and there too.
We walked. I was at the 20th anniversary of the accident, I walked that path again, two km. It was the right decision Then. Someone climbed into the river, into the water, and died there; someone fled into the forest. A wife with a broken ankle was carrying her daughter on her back. She didn’t cry, didn’t scream, she had 4th degree burns, her nerve endings were burned out. At the stop - two or three barracks - about 30 people gathered. Wild screams of the survivors, as if all the dead in the world had woken up at once. After some time, a fire train approached, distraught people rushed to it, the firefighters had no choice but to pick up the people and return them to Ulu-Telyak. “Dad, why are you so scary? Dad, do I have candy in my hands (burn blisters)?” - the last thing I heard from her. At the Ulu-Telyak hospital they euthanized her with injections. By bus to Asha. “I won’t go anywhere without my wife and child.” In Asha, my wife is in the ward with her daughter, I am with them: “Nowhere without me.”
After some time on the helicopter to Ufa, I begin to “float” from the injections. To the operating room only with my daughter. I started crying. "What are you doing?" "Everything is fine". “What time is it? 12? God, I've been on my feet for 12 hours. Put me to sleep! I have no strength." After anesthesia, a person is such a vegetable... Mom, father-in-law, wife's brother... Where? A compassionate woman in Ulu-Telyak sent a telegram, I bow to her. “Where is Olesya? Allah? "In this hospital." Fell asleep. I woke up, they were dragging me somewhere, my mother was nearby. "Where?" “To Moscow” “Olesya?” "With you". The four young soldiers were somehow on a stretcher. “Drop it, I’ll get up on my own now!” “Where, you can’t!” “Black Tulip” (An-12 plane - editor's note) - an old friend, a two-story stretcher. And everyone: “Drink! Mom, drink!” In Moscow, I woke up in Sklif, my hands were like boxing gloves. “Will you cut it?” “No, boy, hold on...”
My daughter died on June 19, fully conscious in terrible agony, her kidneys were failing... They told me about this, having previously pumped me full of morphine, on the ninth day. He tore the bandages, howled like a wolf... A thunderstorm, such as I had never heard before or since, a hurricane of rain that day. These are the tears of the departed. A year later, to the same day, on June 19, a son was born..."
"The pain doesn't go away"
The explosion of the gas mixture was so powerful that the bodies of some passengers were never found later. Some died immediately, others unsuccessfully tried to get out, and those who managed to leave the hot cars died later from burns. The burned adults tried to save the children - there were many schoolchildren on the train who were going on vacation.
“My friend Andrei Dolgachev fell into this “hell” when he was traveling home from the army to the city of Novoanninsky, Volgograd Region, train No. 211, car 9,” writes Vladimir B. “The car did not overturn, but it burned out completely. That night Andrei pulled a burnt pregnant woman out of the carriage; her fate is unknown to me. He didn’t have very many burns (about 28%), although they were deep. Andrei died two weeks after the disaster at the Sverdlovsk Burn Center. He was 18 years old. The family was poor and the whole city buried them. Eternal memory to everyone who died there!”
“My uncle, Kirtava Rezo Razhdenovich, 19 years old, after training he was going to another military unit. That night, he pulled more than ten children from the burning train who were traveling from the camp, says Tamara B. He received burns incompatible with life (80%), the burns were received just during the rescue of the children. He died on the fourth day after the disaster. Posthumously awarded... A street in the village where he was born and raised was named in his honor: the village of Leselidze (Kingisepp), Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Georgia.”
“My employee’s relatives died in this disaster: his brother’s wife and two sons,” Galina D. shares her story. “My brother was a military man, so in search of his family he had the opportunity to fly over the scene of the disaster by helicopter. What he saw shocked him. Unfortunately, his relatives were traveling in one of the last carriages, the same ones that were at the epicenter of the explosion. All that was left of the carriage itself was the wheeled platform, everything burned to the ground. He never found his beloved and dear wife and children; earth and ashes were buried in coffins. A few years later, this man married again and had a son. But according to his sister (my employee), this nightmare still does not leave him, he does not feel truly happy, despite the fact that his son, the heir, is growing up. He lives with pain that does not go away, despite time.”
“The whole body is a complete burn”
The news of the disaster spread quickly, and within half an hour first aid arrived at the scene of the explosion - local residents began to help the wounded and take people to hospitals. Hundreds of people worked at the scene of the tragedy - young cadets cleared the rubble, railway workers restored the tracks, doctors and volunteer assistants evacuated the victims. Doctors recall that there were queues of people wishing to donate blood for the wounded at the hospitals in Asha, Chelyabinsk, Ufa and Novosibirsk.
“I was 8 years old, we were vacationing with relatives in Iglino,” recalls Evgenia M. “My aunt worked in the hospital as a nurse, a colleague came running for her in the morning, and they called the entire medical staff. During the day we went outside - there was a roar in the sky from helicopters, it was scary. A group of children went to the hospital. I still remember the picture - a little girl, about three years old, is being carried from the ambulance, she is crying, she has no clothes and her whole body is completely burnt... It was terrible.”
“I was there. From the Ufa Air Force training on Karl Marx, - writes Dmitry G. - Wake up on alarm in the morning, take your lunch and take the Ikarus to the place. They collected the dead, there were not enough mittens, they tore some rags and wrapped their hands. I don’t remember the stretchers, they were carried on raincoats and laid out with them. The fires were then extinguished further, further away, where the forest was smoldering. Gorbachev flew in, Yazov, helicopters flew before their arrival, we were placed in a cordon around their deliberative tent. There were not only ours, other soldiers, railway workers, like, or construction battalion workers... Cadets, I don’t remember where exactly.”
Birthday disaster
Almost always, after major disasters, there are people on transport who were saved by chance from death - they were late and decided to return their tickets. A similar story was told by Yulia M. from the Chelyabinsk region; at the time of the Ashinsky tragedy she was very young.
“This disaster happened on my birthday, I was about to turn three years old, and my parents decided to give me a gift - a trip to my grandmother. Since I grew up in the military town of DOS (the city of Chebarkul), we had to leave from this station. Every year, tickets were purchased directly a few hours before the train (such were the circumstances), and always safely. But this time the following happened: dad periodically ran to the box office to inquire about tickets, the cashier told him every time, don’t worry, you will have tickets five hours before arrival. Closer to that time, dad comes up to find out again, and they tell him: come back in an hour. Me, mom and dad spent the whole day at the station. The older brother was already with his grandmother (they wanted to go to Tambov). As a result, upon the arrival of the train, the cashier says: the tickets are not working out, but they will be there tomorrow. Dad quarreled with her, mom and dad quarreled among themselves out of nerves, I’m crying... And since the transport was no longer running, we went home with our suitcases through the forest, nervous and upset. And in the morning we found out that such a tragedy had occurred... So my birthday is double and on the same date.”
"Almost no one knows"
The investigation lasted several years, and the official version states that the cause of the explosion was the leak of hydrocarbons from the main pipeline and the subsequent detonation of the gas-air mixture from an accidental spark in the place where two oncoming trains Adler-Novosibirsk and Novosibirsk-Adler were passing simultaneously. It is known that a few hours before the tragedy, the driver of a passing train reported the smell of gas, but they decided to deal with this problem later. It turned out that the pipeline itself ran too close to the railway.
“I remember about the disaster from the age of 6, my parents talked about two trains with which something happened, I learned the details at the age of 16, I remember exactly, because it was just 10 years since the disaster,” says Yulia K., “I studied I watched all the materials I found and watched all the films. I tell my students and am very surprised that almost no one knows anything about the disaster. It is clear that today’s students were born much later than 1989, but we live in Chelyabinsk, many of them are from the region, this is, among other things, the history of our region.”
At the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway there is a memorial to the victims of the Ashinsky disaster; every year those whose lives that night divided into “before” and “after” come to see it. It would seem that such a tragedy should have become a cruel lesson about what happens due to human negligence. Both the participants in those events and the relatives of the victims really want that no one else has to experience the pain they experienced.
