The terrible story of the biggest railway disaster in the history of Romania. Almost a thousand people died in terrible torments

One of the biggest railway disasters in the history of the world took place in Romania, near the city of Iași. A train overloaded with goods and people collided head-on with a train loaded with fuel. There were almost 1000 victims.

The Ciurea disaster PHOTO wikipedia

On January 11, 1917, the “Curierul”, a stage 1 train, departed from Galati station, bound for Ciurea, a station located near the city of Iași. The train was loaded with refugees, soldiers and goods. People fleeing the path of war crowded into the train's 26 cars, pulled by two steam locomotives. Very few of those in this set would make it to their destination alive. The “courier” will turn into a real train of death, reaching statistics as the second great railway tragedy in the history of humanity, in second place after the one in Sri Lanka in 2004, where 1700 people died. It was the biggest railway disaster in Romania, a dramatic event with many unknowns, considering that no detailed investigations were carried out to observe the precise cause. The story was partially reconstructed based on the testimonies of the time.

A country destroyed by war

The context in which this railway tragedy took place is also important. It was January 1917, a catastrophic period for the Kingdom of Romania. Our country entered the First World War in the summer of 1916, on the side of the Entente (along with England, France and Russia), against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria), after two years of neutrality. Romania had joined the Entente with the hope that it would be able to obtain Transylvania and Bucovina.

However, our country entered the war totally unprepared. Funds intended for arming and equipping the army were either siphoned or wasted on preferential contracts, there were tactical mistakes, unjustified hubris and gross incompetence in handling certain situations on the front. And the price was terrible. The Romanian army, initially victorious in Transylvania, was effectively thrown beyond the mountains by the German-Austrian troops, after the disaster at Turtucaia, where the commander effectively abandoned his troops. Cornered from all sides, the Romanian army was defeated, forced to retreat. Everything culminated with the loss of Bucharest on December 19, 1916. Basically, Romania lost half of its territory. The administration, the army and part of the population retreated to Moldova. Iasi was becoming the new capital of Romania. A fierce struggle for national survival was coming.

“The spectacle of the roads was indescribable: men, women, children, sick, old, crippled, on foot, in carriages, in wagons, on horseback, walking in the rain, in the wind, in the cold, in the snow. Some had hurriedly gathered what they could and dragged it after them. Others could no longer go forward and fell exhausted and starving along the roads. Others died in the ditches and their decomposed bodies were left to the prey of the crows. On this Iânga, the exodus of the civilian population mixed with the retreating army convoys, the soldiers, in a hurry to carry out their orders, overturned everything in their way, so terrible fights were born, in the distance the enemy's fire could be heard, the children screamed, the women they were crying, people were roaring, the rain didn't stop, the frost was getting worse, in one part a village was being bombed, in another there were flames of fire. It was a vision of hell.”wrote IG Duca.

The train of despair makes its way through the muck

In this context, only three weeks after the fall of Bucharest, a train line was formed in Galati station to allow soldiers and civilians to retreat to Iași. The Stage E-1 train had 26 cars and was going to take all the refugees to the Ciurea station, located 40 kilometers from the city of Iași. Initially, the train was supposed to leave on the morning of January 11, but the station was heavily bombed by German planes (not the planes specific to the First World War).

After a few hours, during which the lining was rebuilt and a damaged locomotive replaced, the train left the station. The two steam locomotives pulled passenger and freight cars. In the train were numerous mountain refugees, especially from the Braila area, students, Romanian, Russian and French soldiers and officers, members of the mission sent to Romania. Alongside them were also officials, politicians or scientists, such as the geographer George Vâlsan, the Marquis Belloy, representative of the French Mission in Romania, Emil Costinescu, former Minister of Finance, and the daughter of the former French ambassador to Bucharest, Yvonne Blondel. The latter would leave the most precious testimonies of the era about what happened to the stage train.

Traveling the distance from Galati to Ciurea, the train made numerous stops to pick up more and more passengers who were fleeing the path of war as far north as possible. More cars were added and the train had become overcrowded, far beyond its capacity. Passengers sat on the carriages, on the stairs and between the pads, despite the biting frost. In fact, some died frozen on the roof of the wagons or were thrown by the strong wind. “To our horror, a man and a 10-year-old boy were thrown down frozen. Other shadows that swayed, hardened by the cold, told that, at some curves, several people, men and women, had been thrown from the train”wrote Yvonne Blondel. The train was heated only by some gas-based lamps that did not cope. The cold, the infernal congestion, the hours of delay only foreshadowed the tragic end of that journey.

Arriving at the Bârlad station, the train had to stop almost all night because of the heavy snow that fell on the railway line. For hours, CFR employees and soldiers worked with shovels to unblock the line. In the meantime, the technical condition of the locomotives and braking systems was checked. Everything was fine. It was a nightmare night. Cold and snow. People were completely freezing. It wasn't until morning that the snow stopped. The men went back into operation with the shovels and the train was ready to go. The locomotives started moving. It still had 120 kilometers to go, but due to the harsh winter conditions, the train was moving with difficulty. Finally, it reaches Bârnova, 48 kilometers from Iasi and eight kilometers from Ciurea station. The last check of the brakes on the wagons was carried out. They were Westinghouse air brakes, actuated by tap pipes. After checking it was found that everything was in order. The train went on. He was just one step away from his destination.

A total disaster: 1000's of lives lost

The train is on its way to Ciurea. He entered the sloping section near the station. He picked up speed, the mechanics tried to brake, but the brakes failed. Although the train drivers tried to apply the brakes manually, they were not very successful due to the congestion. The train descended towards the station at 95 kilometers per hour, as the stiff needle of the speedometer would later reveal. In the station there was a locomotive stationed on the line and a few wagons of munitions of war. The impact was inevitable. The mechanics began to signal desperately to the station. An employee runs and quickly pulls the jack to direct the runaway train onto track 2, where there is nothing in its path. Due to the very high speed, only the locomotives and one wagon manage to enter line two. The rest of the train effectively breaks away from the locomotive and the first cars, crashing into the stationary locomotive at high speed. It was 1:00 a.m. on January 13.

The stoves in the cars and the boilers of the stationary locomotive immediately cause a catastrophic fire. Soon the nearby ammunition wagons also catch fire and a devastating explosion occurs. People die on their heads in terrible conditions, some crushed by wagons, some hit hard, others burned alive. The wagons were burning like a torch. Few escaped alive. This is about those who were in the first car and a few who moved fast enough in the back cars. Yvonne Blondel, one of the survivors, was rescued by two French soldiers who immediately removed her from the wrecked carriage before she was burned alive. At the peak, some of those traveling on the wagons were saved by being thrown into the large snowpack nearby. Others were saved by the prompt and determined intervention of two companies of Romanian soldiers and two of Russian soldiers near the station. They were also helped by the soldiers of the ammunition depot near the station, as well as the CFR-rists.

“True hell was there in all its horror, and the few who escaped with their lives were like madmen with the horror of the scenes which passed before their eyes”Elena Iamandi wrote.

“Passing through Ciurea, I looked at the disaster: smashed, burned wagons and the teams of workers were still removing the dead from under the ruins. Behind the station, the dead were lined up in four rows… There were many hundreds. With eyes gouged out, heads broken, arms detached, hands, legs, burnt bodies. Women, officers, soldiers”wrote Nicolae Dunăreanu, in “La Ciurea”. It is estimated that there were over 1000 dead. However, no one really knew the extent of the disaster. I. G Duca said that there were 800 dead and hundreds more wounded. Others advanced the figure of 300 dead. It is certain that among the hundreds of wounded, many died in the following days. Overall, it was thought that there were 1000 deaths, probably including the wounded who died in the following days.

Dead thrown into the mass grave, corpses looted

The problem of counting the dead was made difficult by the fact that most of the victims could not be identified. In the harsh conditions of the war, the bodies were effectively thrown into a mass grave. Those who could be identified were taken and buried by their families. French officials also died, Vasile Cantacuzino, a lieutenant in the Romanian army, and the historian Vasile Pârvan was seriously injured. The great geographer George Vâlsan was left with lifelong scars. The mass grave was dug 500 meters from the station.

During the night, dozens of unscrupulous looters entered the smoking wagons and looted the dead. An investigation followed, but without much result. Even today, it is not known exactly what caused the tragedy. The newspaper “Mişcarea” wrote that everything happened because of overcrowding. One of the passengers wedged between the buffers would have accidentally shut off the air supply of carriage III. In addition, the conductors could not reach the valves of the braking system because of the people. “I felt perfectly how the train jumped from the tracks like a monstrous reptile of iron and steel, dragging all its passengers to mutilation or the great journey beyond… I had the sensation of being thrown down a well, a shower of objects sliding around my body… How long did this torment last? A few minutes, but to me it seemed interminable”wrote Yvonne Blondel.