Four die in Soviet rail disaster

Press, 6 October 1988, Page 8

Four die in Soviet rail disaster

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The latest in a series of Soviet railway disasters killed four people and left hundreds injured and homeless when a train loaded with explosives crashed in a station and blew up. The huge blast on Tuesday at Sverdlovsk, a city just east of the Ural mountains, destroyed 20 buildings, ripped a crater in the ground 60m wide and sent clouds of choking black smoke across the city of 1.1 million, Soviet media said. Human error was blamed for the accident, which brought the death toll in Soviet railway dis-

asters to 123 since summer. Twenty-eight people died in a train wreck in August and 91 were killed in a June accident that also involved explosives. In Tuesday’s accident, the walls of residential buildings collapsed and windows were shattered by the blast as terrified people ran into the streets, the Government newspaper “Izvestia” said. Moscow Radio quoted a resident as saying a school and factory caught fire. “People rushed from, their homes and did not recognise the streets: trees were down, electric poles were down, heaps of

bricks blocked the road,” “Izvestia” said. Two hundred and seventy people were injured, with 87 of them in hospital, and 870 were left homeless when 12 residential buildings were destroyed, Soviet media said. “Izvestia” said an error in the station switching yard caused the explosives train to crash into a coal train on another track. The dispatcher said to have given the order to release the brakes on the explosives train was in hospital with injuries. A Government commission was investigating.