Tragedy at Khayyam station. The largest man-made disaster in the entire history of the subway occurred in the Moscow metro. Mass stampede at Luzhniki.

Several carriages came off the rails at high speed. The tragedy occurred on the stretch between the Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Boulevard stations. 21 people were killed and more than 160 were injured. Two people cannot yet be pulled out of the crumpled train.

The first minutes after the accident. Passengers film everything on their mobile phones. Based on these images and eyewitness accounts, it is now possible to partially reconstruct the picture of what happened. Those who found themselves in the carriages this morning say: it was the usual morning rush hour, the carriage was slightly overcrowded, some were going to work, some to school - and suddenly there was a sharp jerk, a blow.

“And then the lights went out, the carriage began to shake. It went off the rails and we were all just thrown all over the place, we got up and turned on the cameras,” says eyewitness Ivan Anikanov.

The only light in the first minutes is the flashlights on mobile phones. The sensors went off and there was an emergency power outage. Many did not understand what was happening. The photographs taken during the evacuation clearly show the scale of what happened. They say that the passengers of the first carriage suffered the most.

Some eyewitnesses say it was very difficult to get out. The carriages are damaged. The output is jammed. This is how the surviving passenger describes what happened on his page on the Internet: “I flew from the center of the car to the outer section. There was a part of the car left with one window. I tried to calm everyone down. I was hanging on a section of the handrail. I asked the guys to tear off the window and then break out the window. The height is about 4 meters. We climbed out along the cables. There was nowhere to get out. We found an opening covered with tin sheets, fittings and thick cables... Smoke, the smell of burning, burning cable, paint. Everyone was screaming... There was a man with a hammer. Everyone was in massive shock."

"For about 20 minutes they beat and beat it somewhere, broke it, opened it. We saw a passage there, saw that a second line was being built there. There were workers there, we took everyone there who could. It was just normal to breathe there, there was no smoke there, they showed us exit, then we reached Victory Park, they gave us first aid,” recalls eyewitness Ivan Panikarov.

Some people are luckier. For those who were traveling on other trains. Although they were trapped in the tunnel, they were not harmed. It soon became clear that the movement would not continue. The evacuation has begun. The driver of one of the trains himself went to open the cars.

When it was all over and they managed to get out, the victims described everything on social networks: “We walked to the head of the train, and then these unfortunate 200 meters to the station. Rescuers and some services in dark overalls with white reflective stripes were walking towards us. An unexpected surprise awaited us on the platform. "There were a lot of police, they asked if there was any need for medical assistance and then let me out. I didn't see any smoke or anything strange. On the contrary, the huge number of fire trucks at the station was very surprising."

Some eyewitnesses continued filming videos until they exited the metro, where they were already receiving full medical care. Also, on the platform of the Arbatsko-Pokrovsky line stations, everyone could receive certificates stating that they were late for work for a good reason.

At about five o'clock in the evening on February 17, 1982, Muscovites who worked near the Aviamotornaya station were heading home. As always at this time, the metro was filled with people and the station attendant turned on the reserve escalator so as not to create a crowd. Less than half an hour later, one of the most tragic events in the entire history of the Moscow metro took place.

Due to a breakdown of the trolley mechanism, the stairs lost grip with the engine, and the escalator slid sharply down, picking up speed. The ladder rushed at a speed 2.5 times higher than normal.

People lost their balance and fell down, sliding down the steps and blocking the passage at the lower exit platform.

The total weight of the passengers on the escalator was 12 tons, and almost all of them formed a mountain of bodies at the bottom of the escalator in a few seconds.

The tragedy lasted 110 seconds. At 17.10 the entrance to the station was limited, at 17.35 it was blocked. Ten minutes later the station itself was closed, trains passed by without stopping. Ambulance teams were called to the station.

In the 1980s, newspapers didn't talk much about such things. The next day, only a few lines of notice were published in Evening Moscow: “On February 17, 1982, an escalator accident occurred at the Aviamotornaya station of the Kalinin radius of the Moscow metro. There are casualties among the passengers. The causes of the accident are being investigated."

But word of mouth worked great.

The city was filled with rumors about hundreds of dead who fell into the engine room located under the escalator and were torn apart by working mechanisms, about a station drenched in blood.

“It should be noted that the floor of Aviamotornaya is really paved with marble of a reddish hue, reminiscent of dried blood,” writes Matvey Grechko, author of the book “Secret Moscow Metro Lines in Schemes, Legends, Facts.” “Realizing that it is quite difficult to remove any contamination from porous marble, and completely forgetting that the floor of the station looked exactly the same as a year ago, Muscovites considered these “blood stains” as proof of the veracity of the most terrible gossip. Many, not wanting to walk through blood, began to avoid the strange station, and Aviamotornaya became deserted and deserted for a long time.”

A few months later, in April 1982, the newspaper “New Russian Word” very colorfully described what happened:

“According to eyewitnesses, as a result of a break in a crowded escalator, several hundred people fell into the mechanism that continued to rotate, dozens were crushed, and more than a hundred were maimed. All this happened in front of people moving on a parallel escalator. Panic arose among them, causing additional casualties: several people died in the crush.”

In reality, of course, no one was drawn into the mechanisms. People were injured and died in the resulting crush. Some passengers, trying to get out of it, climbed onto the balustrade. The thin, only 3 mm, plastic cladding could not stand it and collapsed, but underneath there were not terrible mechanisms that turned respectable citizens into bloody mincemeat, but stable concrete foundations. People who fell from a two-meter height received bruises, but remained alive.

Nine months later, at a meeting of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, the exact number of victims was announced: 30 wounded and eight dead.

As investigators found out, the reason was the incorrect operation of the new brakes installed on Aviamotornaya escalators in December 1981. Metro employees, not familiar with the new requirements, regulated their work according to old instructions. As a result, the escalators operated in emergency mode for three months. During the accident, one of the steps broke, and as it passed the bottom ridge of the escalator, it deformed and destroyed it. The protection tripped and the electric motor turned off. But the emergency electromagnetic brake was able to develop the required braking torque only when the braking distance was more than 11 m. And the mechanical emergency brake did not work because the speed of the belt did not reach the threshold value.

A very difficult situation has arisen for the metro management. There have been numerous complaints about escalators of this series, and, of course, after the incident it was necessary to check all of them. But then almost two dozen stations would have to be closed, which would paralyze the work of the metro and lead to a scandal.

As a result, it was decided to close only Aviamotornaya. The repairs lasted three weeks and went on around the clock; teams of 70 people worked at the station in three shifts, seven days a week. At the remaining stations, escalators were repaired gradually, strengthening the steps, modernizing the brakes, changing the main drive shafts and balustrade panels.

TRAGEDY AT KHAYAM STATION

On February 18, 2004, at one of the railway stations in Khorasan province, in northeastern Iran, a freight train carrying 17 wagons of sulfur, six tanks of gasoline, seven wagons of fertilizer and 10 wagons of cotton derailed and exploded. Since all of the above burns very well, a powerful fire started at the station. While extinguishing it, another explosion occurred. As a result, more than 320 people died, about 400 people received injuries and burns of varying severity, 90 people went missing, and surrounding settlements were severely damaged. According to the investigative commission, in this case people again faced the most common cause of man-made disasters - ordinary negligence.

Modern man, alas, is no stranger to explosions on transport lines passing through peaceful cities and towns. Tragedies like the Iranian one occur every year, claiming lives and causing damage to buildings and equipment. Recently, emergency situations have become more frequent, and the scale of their consequences has an unfortunate tendency to constantly increase. There are plenty of reasons for this: overload of many transport hubs, lack of personnel, outdated equipment, tragic accidents, natural disasters, someone’s ill will and, no matter how trite it sounds, ordinary negligence.

According to the representative of the Iranian authorities, Vahid Barkechi, the tragedy occurred at the Khayyam station. It is located in the Khorasan province, 20 kilometers from the city of Nishapur and 70 kilometers from the city of Mashhad. A train of more than 100 freight wagons without a locomotive stood quietly on a siding at Abumoslem station in the Nishapur district. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began to move and set off downhill, in the direction of the neighboring station - Khayyam, gradually increasing speed. The first official reports disseminated by the media suggested that the carriages moved as a result of ground shaking that took place that day. Indeed, in the early morning of February 18, a seismic station in northeastern Iran recorded tremors measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale. Another question is how strongly the ground vibrations were felt in the Abumoslem area and whether they could have pushed heavily loaded wagons and tanks out of place... True, no one had the opportunity to think seriously about this in the first hours after the disaster.

Be that as it may, the accelerated train continued to pick up speed and at the Khayyam station crashed into another freight train, which was standing in the path of uncontrolled cars: the driver did not have time to remove the train waiting for loading from the impact. As a result of a powerful collision, 50 Abumoslem carriages were carried off the railway track. It is still unclear when the first explosion occurred - before the out-of-control train derailed, or after the cars loaded with flammable materials overturned. It seems that this is no longer so important, because the difference of a few minutes could not save the people doomed to death.

So, after the collision, a roaring flame rose above one of the gasoline tanks. The presence of cotton, sulfuric acid and fertilizers in neighboring cars contributed to the fact that a few minutes later a barrage of fire raged at the station. Immediately after the train crash, teams of firefighters and qualified rescuers were sent to the scene of the disaster and began to eliminate the consequences of the collision. Naturally, the first to try was to extinguish the burning fuel tanks. It was at this moment that a second explosion occurred, significantly exceeding the first in power: the remaining oil tanks could not withstand it. As a result, there were many dead at the station - mostly firefighters and rescuers. In addition, the second explosion caused the death of many local residents and several high-ranking officials: the governor of Khorasan province, the mayor, the fire chief and the chief power engineer of the city of Nishapur. At the same time, the manager of the railway in this province went missing.

This explosion was so strong that it was heard even in populated areas located 75 kilometers from the site of the disaster. And the blast wave that swept through the surrounding area broke glass in all houses located within a radius of 10 kilometers from the epicenter. But five nearby villages suffered the most: they were hit by fire and were almost completely burned. This explains the huge number of victims of the disaster at the station.

Iranian state television initially caused confusion in reports of the tragedy. Immediately after the accident, it reported a collision between two passages - a cargo and a passenger one. Journalists immediately began to estimate the possible number of victims... Only a day later it became known that the disaster affected two freight trains.

All train traffic on the emergency section of the railway was temporarily closed. The fact is that even on February 19, firefighters were still fighting the fire: there was no way to put it out, and the threat of new explosions was quite real. Moreover, the derailed train still contained fuel tanks that were not touched by the flames. To avoid the appearance of new, senseless victims, cordons of troops were set up within a kilometer radius of the burning cars. Then, on February 19, the authorities declared three days of mourning in the city of Nishapur.

In the end, Iranian firefighters managed to extinguish the hellish fire that raged for more than a day at the site of the explosion. Eliminating the fire was complicated by a large concentration of toxic substances that were released into the air during the explosion of gasoline and chemicals: it was extremely difficult to work in such a toxic atmosphere, and some rescuers were seriously poisoned.

After news of the tragedy in Khorasan reached the media, the UN Secretary-General sent his condolences to the government and people of Iran. Kofi Annan also said that the United Nations is ready to provide assistance to the victims.

A government commission went to the scene of the disaster within the first hours. Representatives of the authorities and specialists were going to establish the real causes of the accident. The first version they put forward was not original and suggested carrying out another terrorist act at the station - alas, at present this topic is perhaps the most painful for society. Naturally, given such a combination of circumstances, such an explanation of what happened seems the most likely, and the authorities begin to wait to see which group will take responsibility for carrying out the explosion. However, the Iranians quickly figured out the situation and did not look for the black cat in the dark room: there was clearly no one to pin the disaster on. The governor of Khorasan province, Hassan Rasuli, made an official statement on February 23 that investigators rejected the version of a terrorist attack. “Commissions specially appointed for the investigation, which included specialists from the Iranian railway department and law enforcement agencies, rejected the possibility of sabotage,” the speech said. And the version that appeared in the media that the ill-fated train could have been set in motion by an earthquake was not considered worthy of attention by the commission at all and therefore was not considered: the tremors in the station area were so weak that they were practically not felt. Moreover, they could not cause the spontaneous movement of a multi-ton train. The only plausible cause of the tragedy, according to experts, is... ordinary negligence of those responsible, “successfully” supplemented by a technical failure of the brake system and possible personnel error.

Malice, indifference and incompetence... How often do they end up on the same side of the scale! And although the dishonest performance of one’s duties is not legally terrorism, the disastrous results of both often cost each other. And if terrorism can still be fought somehow, then what to do with the eternal confidence of each of us in our own impunity? Any person at least once in his life is led by... circumstances, lack of time, poor health - what's the difference? And he prefers to “not notice” the negligence committed in his work, allowing himself to superficially fulfill his professional duties. At the same time, everyone - regardless of age, character and worldview - hopes for that same eternal “maybe”. This applies not only to the Slav brothers, who in all centuries have been reproached for some carelessness - in this regard, people show enviable unanimity. Examples include accidents at nuclear power plants in different countries of the world, tanker disasters, houses not designed for seismic activity and, nevertheless, built in earthquake zones... Negligence is what, in all likelihood, unites all representatives of the human race. It would be nice to find other, more optimistic points of contact...