The explosion in Arzamas thundered in 1988, it was one of the largest disasters on the Soviet railway. When approaching the Arzamas 1 station, three wagons of a freight train that immediately sailed to the Kazakh SSR from Dzerzhinsk exploded. They contained hexogen, which was required by mining enterprises. As a result of the disaster, 91 people died, the number of victims is about one and a half thousand.
Incident details
The explosion in Arzamas thundered on June 4. At 09:32 a.m., the train rode through the crossing to the city of Arzamas. In three wagons of this train, 120 tons of explosives were transported, which was intended for mining enterprises in the territory of modern Kazakhstan.
The railway crossing itself is located in the northern part of the Arzamas 1 station. Later, investigators and experts were able to establish that at the time of the explosion in the train cars there were 30 tons of TNT blocks, as well as another 87 tons of ammonal, ammonite, HMX, RDX, in addition, the charges used for oil production.
The explosion in Arzamas in 1988 was the main and shocking tragedy for the whole society.
Aftermath of an explosion
Already after the explosion thundered, at the place where at that moment there were freight cars, two funnels formed at once, which were interconnected. Their depth ranged from three and a half to four and a half meters. The diameter of the first funnel was 26 meters, and the second - 76 meters.
The consequences of the explosion in Arzamas were disastrous. He destroyed 151 houses, 823 families officially remained homeless. According to official information, 91 people died, another 1,500 were injured. The blast wave destroyed 250 meters of the railway track, seriously damaged the railway station, power substation, power lines, gas pipeline.
Among the social facilities, the number of victims was two hospitals, as many as 49 kindergartens, 14 secondary schools and 69 shops. In total, 160 objects of industrial and economic importance turned out to be in the so-called affected area.
Versions of what happened
Initially, the main version of the explosion in Arzamas in 1988 was considered a violation of the procedure for loading and transporting explosives. At the same time, the investigation carefully investigated the version of the terrorist act, as well as the sabotage committed by one of the special services of another country, in order to create an unstable situation in the Soviet Union.
It is believed that the true causes of the explosion in Arzamas are still unknown. Many researchers and historians believe that the authorities and special services do not reveal the whole truth about what happened.
Now, at the site of the explosion of a train in Arzamas, a memorial memorial has been erected on which the names of all those who died in this disaster are carved. Every year on June 4, on the anniversary of the tragedy, locals come to this place to remember the dead.
One of the consequences of the explosion in Arzamas on June 4, 1988 was the construction of as many as 11 neighborhoods in the south of the city for families affected by this tragedy.
Was it a diversion?
The government commission, whose goal was to establish the true causes of the tragedy, worked at the scene of the disaster for several years. As a result, she never managed to establish the exact reasons for what happened. Basically, because of this, the version that it was a sabotage, a targeted act, and not an accident or someone's negligence is so popular.
Among the main versions of the incident, a spontaneous explosion of explosives, which was located in railway cars (mainly octogen and crystalline hexogen), is also called. Most likely, this could happen due to mechanical damage or a malfunction of the gas pipeline, which passed directly under the railway lines.
In 2003, 15 years after the tragedy, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region (at that time he was Gennady Khodyrev) officially expressed his firm belief that the explosion in Arzamas on June 4, 1988 occurred as a result of sabotage. But in reality, this widespread version has not found official confirmation and irrefutable evidence so far.
It should be recognized that the version of the deliberate undermining of the train was one of the most popular, especially among local residents. It was believed that the ultimate goal was to inflict as much damage as possible on the city itself. Mostly this version was based on the fact that the composition exploded in the immediate vicinity of the city itself. The railroad accident near Ufa, which happened day after day with the tragedy in Arzamas exactly one year later, provided additional food for thought.
What happened in Ufa?
The catastrophe near Ufa became the largest in the history of Soviet and Russian railways. It occurred on June 4, 1989 in the area of the city of Iglinsk in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, only 11 kilometers from the city of Asha, Chelyabinsk Region. The explosion thundered at the moment when two passenger trains passed towards each other. One followed from Novosibirsk to Adler, and the second in the opposite direction. According to the official version, the explosion occurred due to a cloud of light hydrocarbons, which were formed due to the accident that occurred on the Siberia-Urals-Volga pipeline. It took place in the vicinity of trains.
As a result of this tragedy, 575 people died, according to another version - 645. Of these, 181 children, about six hundred people were injured.
According to the official version, the catastrophe occurred due to a gas leak. The gas pipeline was allegedly damaged by the excavator bucket during its construction back in 1985. Experts were able to establish that the gas leak began 40 minutes before the explosion.
According to another version, the cause of the accident was the effect of corrosion on the outer part of the pipe. This could be due to the so-called "stray currents" from the railway. About three weeks before the explosion, micro fistula formed in that place, which, due to sudden cooling, turned into a crack in the place of gas expansion. When there was a meeting of two passenger trains, a spark arose due to braking, it was enough to start gas detonation. According to another assumption, a spark could have arisen from under the pantograph of some of the locomotives.
Arzamas tragedy facts
A lot of research is devoted to the tragedy in Arzamas, experts and amateur historians have managed to collect a large number of facts about this disaster. In particular, it was established that the first cargo went on May 31 from the Sverdlov plant, which was located in the city of Dzerzhinsk. Explosives were loaded into ten freight wagons.
As a result, three wagons with explosives became the lead ones in the freight train, numbered 3115, which departed on June 3 to the south of the country.
What exactly was in each car?
Now we have already managed to establish what kind of explosives were in each of the cars.
The first was all-metal, it contained 30 tons of TNT in checkers, which were packed in boxes from corrugated cardboard, as well as 286 kilograms of cumulative detonators in boxes from ordinary fiberboard.
The second car was also all-metal. It contained 27 tons of HMX and more than 30 tons of phlegmatized RDX, which were carefully packed in six-layer paper bags.
Finally, the third carriage was wooden. It contained paper cartridges sealed with cellophane and then packed in cardboard boxes. Also, five tons of rocky ammonite and 25 tons of ammonal were stacked in the car.
In total, the train consisted of 54 cars. At the time of the disaster, he was moving at a speed of 22 kilometers per hour. The explosion itself in Arzamas-16 occurred exactly 324 meters from the railway station.
Memoirs of Eyewitnesses
According to official figures, the explosion occurred exactly at 09:32 Moscow time. It was at that moment that the clock hands on the dial, which is installed on the memorial, stopped. But state security officials who conducted the investigation and interviewed witnesses believe that the explosion actually rang out six minutes earlier.
Eyewitnesses say that the station building itself did not suffer much, its roof was demolished, but the small one-story houses that were in the district within a radius of about 150 meters were simply demolished. Many victims were in a regular bus, which was located near the railway track. He completely tore off the top.
According to other eyewitnesses, at first, many thought it was gas exploded. When they ran to the windows, they saw a large black mushroom that grew in the sky. Someone decided that the tank farm exploded.
Where did the explosion happen?
When considering versions of what happened, it is important to establish where the explosion occurred directly, inside or outside the car.
In favor of the fact that the epicenter of the explosion was inside the car, says the fact that the thermal decomposition of explosives occurred due to chemical instability. A strong mechanical impact on the thinnest layer of explosives led to a spark, which could even arise from a discharge of static electricity. As a result, a bullet of the car appeared as a bullet; the shock-wave action began from a detonator capsule or an electric detonator.
Explosion outside the wagon
According to another version, the explosion could have occurred outside the car. It could be caused by the ignition or explosion of a gas-air mixture, which could occur a hundred meters underground, where the gas pipeline passed. Some witnesses claim to have a characteristic smell of gas.
Experts modeled a large number of situations that could lead to tragedy, conducted a large number of tests. Exactly the same wagons were brought to the landfills, they were even shot with weapons, explosives were tried to set fire to, they were thrown at. A large number of witnesses and eyewitnesses to the explosion were interviewed. A thorough analysis of the loading method and the condition in which the cars themselves were located was carried out. Extensive work has been carried out, but now it is not possible to find out the truth.