Ciurea rail disaster

Ciurea rail disaster

Location of Ciurea within present-day Iași County
Date	14 January [O.S. 1 January] 1917
Time	1 a.m.
Location	Ciurea station 10 km (6.2 mi) S from Iași
Coordinates	46°53′17″N 27°11′12″E / 46.88806°N 27.18667°E / 46.88806; 27.18667Coordinates: 46°53′17″N 27°11′12″E / 46.88806°N 27.18667°E / 46.88806; 27.18667
Country	Kingdom of Romania
Rail line	Bârlad–Iași
Operator	CFR
Type of incident	Derailment
Cause	Brake failure
Statistics
Trains	1
Deaths	800–1,000

Ciurea rail disaster, known in Romania as the Ciurea catastrophe (Romanian: Catastrofa de la Ciurea),^[1] occurred on 13 January 1917,^[2] during World War I, at Ciurea station, Iași County, a station with a passing loop, located on the railway line from Iași to Bârlad. Due to the absence of a formal investigation, the exact cause of the accident is not known, and the death toll is uncertain, with most sources indicating between 800 and 1,000 deaths.^[3] Thus, the Ciurea rail disaster is the third worst rail accident in world history, in terms of the number of victims.

The accident

Train E-1,^[4] nicknamed "the Courier", consisting of 26 cars, left Galați with destination Iași Friday, 11 January [O.S. 30 December 1916] 1917. It was running several hours late, because the station had been bombed by German airplanes, and its locomotive, hit by bombs, had to be replaced. Occupation of Brăila by Germans, who began to bomb Galați, caused the residents of nearby Muntenia to leave their town, in the belief that it was unsafe. They were joined by students and soldiers on leave. As well as Romanians, the train's passengers included Russian officers and soldiers,^[5] as well as members of the French military mission.^[4] Among the best-known travelers were Emil Costinescu, former Minister of Finance, Yvonne Blondel, daughter of a former French ambassador to Bucharest,^[6] geographer George Vâlsan and marquis de Belloy (French official). Very soon, the train became overcrowded.^[7] More cars were added as the train proceeded along its route, with the train sometimes waiting for hours as hundreds of travelers tried to make room.

Travel conditions were terrible: the wagons, many of them boxcars, illuminated by gas lamps, were cold; the windows had no glass, but planks that failed to keep out the frigid air. On the roofs of the wagons, travelers died of cold. "To our horror, a man and a 10-year-old boy were taken down frozen. Other shadows that were staggering, hardened by cold, recounted that, at some curves, many people – men and women – had been thrown off the train", writes Yvonne Blondel.^[8]

The train stopped overnight in Bârlad because a heavy snowfall had blocked the rails, despite the efforts of soldiers and railwaymen to clear the line. The next day, on 12 January, the convoy went to Iasi, traveling 120 km. It reached Ciurea around one o'clock the next morning,^[9] which is when the accident occurred.

After the last stop at Bârnova, the train reached the glide slope at Ciurea station, just a few kilometers from Iași. When the crew members tried to reduce speed, they realized that the brakes, though checked at Bălteni station, could not be operated.^[10] According to the newspaper "Mișcarea", the compressed air brake system functioned only for the first two wagons, the valve being accidentally closed at the third wagon. The train derailed and collided with a locomotive standing on another line. The locomotive's speedometer needle was found stuck at 95 km/h,^[11] suggesting the speed the train was moving at when the accident occurred. A survivor said of the moment of the accident: "I felt perfectly how the train jumped off the rail like a monstrous reptile of iron and steel, pulling all its travelers to mutilation or the great travel to beyond... I had the feeling that I'm thrown into the bottom of a pit, a rain of objects sliding around my body... How long this torment? A few minutes, but to me it seemed interminable...".

Receiving signals launched by the engineers of the stricken locomotives, Ciurea railway station employees activated a switch so that the train to enter line 2 and avoid collision with wagons of tar that were stopped on line 1. Because of the high speed and sharp angle, however, only the locomotive and one wagon managed to enter line 2; all but two of the other cars derailed. It seems that at least one of the wagons collided with some fuel tanks, triggering an explosion and a huge fire. The train burned like a torch in less than two hours. Yvonne Blondel was rescued by two soldiers of the French military mission, which pulled her out of the train wreck exactly when her clothes were ablaze.^[12] Other passengers died in fire or were crushed by the impact of the derailment.^[13] Those traveling on the roofs of the wagons were either thrown under the train cars and crushed, or were thrown into the snow. The same French survivor describes with details the scenes of the tragedy, including the emergence of looters, who robbed the travelers. On the spot arrived teams of rescuers – soldiers of the ammunition depot near the train station, railway workers, two companies of Romanian soldiers and two companies of Russian soldiers. The survivors were transported to Iași station, where they were given first aid.

Lack of information

The lack of information on the accident is due primarily to the exceptional situation in which the Romanian state found itself at the time.^[4] The Kingdom of Romania was at war with the Central Powers, and the administration, the military, and most citizens took refuge in Moldavia. The Romanian state was about to be occupied and dismantled by the Germans. Given the state of war, few newspapers reported on the accident. It is not very clear whether there was an investigation, or what its results may have been.^[14] As such, the sources of information for researchers are limited to the testimony of survivors, memoirs, press, and interwar publications that have addressed the issue.^[15]

Likewise, doubts have been cast on whether the photo of the accident circulated by the media was authentic and depicted the actual derailment at Ciurea. Taken, as stated, on 19 January [O.S. 6 January] 1917, it does not show any trace of snow, although two distinct memoir sources talk about passengers that were on the roofs of cars and survived because they were thrown off the train into snowbanks.^[16][17] As such, this photo is not dated correctly.^[15] It is known that Ciurea was the site of several railway accidents during the early 20th century, with one known incident taking place in 1925.^[18] Most likely the photo was taken on one of those occasions.

Reactions

In the first hours after the accident, several officials arrived at the scene – Dimitrie Greceanu, Minister of Public Works, the prosecutor general, the prefect of Iasi, but also Security agents who began to question witnesses.^[19] By the morning, the news of the accident had spread throughout the city. Daylight revealed the magnitude of the tragedy: "Passing through Ciurea I looked the disaster: wagons crushed, burned and teams of workers drew more dead under the wreck. Behind the station were strung on four rows the dead... Were several hundreds. With eyes removed, heads broken, arms detached, hands, legs, burned bogies. Women, officers, soldiers...".^[20] Another notes: "A whole string of wagons burned, that don't retain only the metal skeletion, soaked like wax by the fire that consumed it... around the station everything seemed ruin and grave...".^[21]

Hundreds of bodies were found among the twisted metal remnants of the train cars. The victims were laid out near the station and countless calls were made to people to help identify them.^[22] Very few of the bodies were ever identified. They were buried in mass graves on the field behind the Ciurea station,^[13] starting on January 3,^[23] for the victims identified to date – 374 people.^[24] Over the next several days, provisional lists of names of the identified dead were announced. Soon, rumors began to spread: there were discussions about fortunes evaporated in the fire or looted by thieves, the death toll was amplified, and famous names were fraudulently added to the lists of victims. In German-occupied Muntenia, a memoirist wrote about reports of the accident, noting with malicious joy "the death of Take Ionescu, Cantacuzino (Minister of Justice), Costinescu (Minister of Finance)".^[25]

Today, the only memorial to the disaster is a cross raised by Vasile Cantacuzino, son of eminent jurist and politician Matei B. Cantacuzino.

References