2014 Moscow Metro derailment

2014 Moscow Metro derailment
An 81-740/741 series train, similar to that involved in the accident.
Details
Date	15 July 2014
Location	Moscow
Coordinates	55°44′11″N 37°30′56″E
Country	Russia
Line	Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line
Operator	Moscow Metro
Statistics
Deaths	23
Injured	160 (estimated)

On 15 July 2014, at around 8:45 am, an outbound Moscow Metro train derailed between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar stations of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. Casualties reported include 23 dead and 160 injured. Early reports suggested a power surge or a terrorist attack to be the cause of the derailment, but both were soon dismissed. Due to unclear mass media reports, rescuers took more time arriving to the location and, as a result, more casualties than expected have occurred prior to evacuation.

This accident was the deadliest ever recorded in the history of the Moscow metro system, and the second to occur due to a technical failure (after the 1982 Aviamotornaya escalator accident).

Background

The Moscow Metro is one of the busiest in the world, serving up to nine million passengers on a daily basis. It covers 325.4 kilometres (202.2 mi) of track, and includes more than 194 stations. Despite having a reputation for reliability, the system has been increasingly suffering from mismanagement, cost-cutting practices, poor maintenance and outages in recent years.

According to several media reports, a Facebook user announced that two weeks prior to the disaster, he filed an official request to the head of the underground system reporting "problems with the tracks." The user quoted from the reply received in his e-mail: "The tracks are maintained in conformity with the technical standards and tolerances. Problems with mechanical switches in the joints have not been detected, being that the size of the gaps correspond to the technical regulations."

Accident

Moscow metro 2014 derailment (interactive map)

Early reports cited a power surge as the cause of the accident, but this has not been confirmed and remains under investigation. Passengers on the train described cars striking one another, with most of the impact occurring at the front of the train as the leading cars piled up on each other. The final two cars remained on the tracks and were only slightly damaged.

The derailment occurred 300 meters away from the Park Pobedy station outbound towards the Slavyansky Bulvar station, near the railroad switch to an unused path of the Kalininskaya Line. The switch was installed only weeks prior to the accident, as part of construction project initiated in 2013 in order to extend the Kalininskaya Line to the western part of Solntsevo District. Surviving passengers who had no chance to cross the debris were evacuated through several construction drifts leading to the surface shaft.

The derailment also caused a massive power outage on the line, and another train, which was located in the tunnel at the time of accident, some 200 meters from Slavyansky Bulvar, was also stuck and passengers had to be evacuated. There were no medical injuries reported from that train.

Victims

There were 23 killed in the accident, and about 118 were hospitalized. About 42 people remained in "serious condition". Another 200 people were evacuated from the Metro; those with injuries were attended outside the station. Initial reports stated that an additional 20 passengers remained underground, trapped in one of the cars. The train operator, a 29-year-old man, luckily survived the crash, but was very badly injured and had to undergo cranial surgery.

Passenger Andrey Zenin, a survivor of the derailment who witnessed the accident, reported to a news agency: "The train derailed right in front of our carriage. The carriage that was across the tracks had a small fire in it and was full of smoke. We took the fire extinguishers and started to extinguish the fire. We then broke down the door into the next tunnel and some of the people who were able to move started to walk from the next carriage towards Metro workers, who led them towards the tunnel, which led upstairs. It had an elevator, but it wasn’t very big, so first of all we put the injured in the elevator."

A spokesperson for the transport commission indicated that all passengers were "evacuated from the affected stations by midday". Terrorist threat was suspected, but quickly dismissed in this case. In the early morning of 17 July, the personnel has finished clearing off the debris, and reported another casualty. In total, 17 corpses were removed from the debris, with the remainder of victims succumbing to critical injuries within 24 hours after rescue.

Investigation

On 15 July 2014, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation of the accident, according to part 3 of Article 263.1 of the Criminal Code (violation of the requirements of transport safety). Supervising examination work at the accident site, investigators interviewed witnesses and employees as [[{{{1}}}]], the official representative of the [[{{{1}}}]], said the investigation is considering several causes for the accident. All of them are technical, there being no connection with terrorist attacks. He stated that for technical accidents, certain people would be investigated and suspects would be identified.

On 16 July 2014 a senior road master of railway service and his assistant who were working on installing railroad switch were detained accused of negligence. According to investigators, they would have fixed incorrectly a new rail switch using a 3 mm wire instead of special equipment during maintenance work two months ago. This wire could have caused an overheating of the system and caused the accident. The unprofessional operating of the train is another contributing factor, according to investigation, as the previous train which passed the area 3-4 minutes before the accident kept lower speed at the switch, preventing it from derailment.

Another contributing factor might stem from rather poor design of the '81-740/741' subway cars, dating back to 2002. The joint articulation of the head car located between two cars allowing passengers to freely travel from one another broke off and blocked the passage, rotating the head car some 70 degrees into the wrong tunnel and causing the other two cars to crash into the head car at 70 km/h.