Train collision at Koristovka
Viktor Loshak
[І тут, і всюди – скрізь погано]
The accident described below by our special correspondent once again focuses on the importance of the problems taken up by “MN “ on page 12 in “Forget Chernobyl?”
Even those who know what happened there could not immediately find traces of the accident. Only on closer inspection could one see broken glass on the embankment, a fragment of a coach railing, and a ripped out suitcase handle. The sight of two electric locomotives on the siding gives you a jolt: they are badly mauled, crumpled up, sockets staring at you. They with their black empty look as if can’t tear themselves away from each other after the terrible head-on collision on the night of November 6.
Most of the dead and injured were alseep [! asleep?] when the trains collided at 3 a.m. Both trains were supposed to pass the place at different times. But the No. 38 fast train from Kiev to Donetsk and the No. 635 passenger train from Krivoi Rog to Kiev were both late. They were several minutes behind schedule, something you never pay attention to when travelling by rail. It so happened, however, that both trains reached the small station of Koristovka at the same time.
The station is within a 40-minute’s ride from the rail junction of Znamenka and in 90-minute’s ride from the regional centre of Kirovograd. The unimportant Koristovka is on an important line of intense rail traffic.
On that fatal day the officer on duty at Koristovka was Eleonora Nesterenko, recently voted one of the finest assistant station-masters on the line. For her the problem with two late trains was as elementary as a one-operation arithmetic problem for a school kid. The fast train from Kiev was to fly past Koristovka without even slowing down while the passenger train had to be held up at the approaches and then allowed to pull into the station.
Everything seemed simple in the situation which for reasons yet to be fully investigated turned into a disaster. At the time the night sky went ablaze, the station’s panes became shattered and all the red lights on the control board came on.
There I was shown pictures made that morning. A mail van sitting on top of a passenger coach. A close-up of what used to be the cab of a loco… Coach No. 1 of train No. 635 rammed into the loco. All the dead were passengers on this train.
How could the collision have happened?
“The USSR Procurator’s Office is investigating the accident’s circumstances,” said I.Zhekov, legal official. “There are many questions. Why, in passing the station, did the driver of the passenger train put his assistant at the controls? How was the signal system working? Unfortunately, no monitoring instruments on both locomotives have survived the crash. The driver of train No. 635 is now under investigation. His mate is in hospital.
What happened after the collision is difficult to establish for sure. One thing is clear though: railwaymen and uninjured passengers were the first to start the rescue operation.
“It was easy to lose your head. What to do first? But even in the first confused minutes I saw young men who had got a ladder, crowbars and hammers from somewhere,” said Koristovka’s station-master I.Sekret. “I learned later that they were a group of builders on their way home from work in Chernobyl.”
Mining rescue teams were rushed from the town of Aleksandria. By 6 a.m., all the people were pulled out of the collided trains. Cranes and trucks were used to tear damaged coaches off the track, to resume traffic.
“A centre was set up in the same morning hours to carry out the toughest functions,” said chair of the Znamensky city executive committee M.Vasilashko. “A hotel and railway hostel were vacated to accommodate the relatives of those who died and got injured. All the bodies had to be identified. Medics, communication people, State Insurance men, and Soviet Airlines were there to help us.”
The government commission led by Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR A.Khomich is yet to make their conclusions. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine has extended condolences to all the victims and to the relatives and friends of those who died. They have been provided with material aid.
Moscow news, 1986, 16.11, № 46 (3242).