The Balvano train disaster occurred on the night between 2–3 March 1944 in Balvano, Basilicata, when 517 people in a steam-hauled, coal-burning freight train (mostly stowaways) died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a protracted stall in a tunnel. It was the deadliest railway accident in Italian history and one of the worst railway disasters ever.
Circumstances
In 1943, Axis Italy was invaded by British and American armed forces, and the southern part of the peninsula (almost fully conquered by Allied forces) suffered severe wartime shortages, encouraging an extensive black market. People in large cities such as Naples began bartering fresh produce for commodities brought by servicemen, and stowed away on freight trains to reach their suppliers' farms.
The railway companies also suffered shortages of good-quality coal. The burning of low-grade substitutes in locomotives reduced their power output and produced a large volume of carbon monoxide, an odorless and poisonous gas, a particularly severe problem in Italy's railway network, which crosses mostly mountainous land, and hence makes large use of tunnels with steep inclines of up to 3.5%.
In February 1944, similar conditions resulted in one death on the Battipaglia–Metaponto railway when a man was poisoned by poor-quality coal exhaust. He fainted, was crushed between the engine and the tender, and died. No corrective action was taken to prevent recurrences.
Disaster
thumb|left|The Balvano station master points out the direction by which the train left. The tunnel shown is not the Armi tunnel, which is further.
On the evening of 2 March 1944 the freight train 8017 started from Naples heading to Potenza. It consisted of 47 freight wagons and had a heavy weight of ; it also carried many unpaid passengers.
The first part of the journey took place on flat railway, and the train was pulled by an E.626 electric engine. At 19:00 the train left Battipaglia and entered the steeper, non-electrified Battipaglia–Metaponto railway; the electric engine had been replaced by two steam engines (the 480.016 followed by the 476.058).
In Eboli some stowaways were forced off, but more boarded on following stops until they numbered about 600, making the train grossly overloaded. At midnight, the train arrived in the Balvano-Ricigliano station, making it the last before the disaster, where it stopped for maintenance on the engines.
At 00:50 the train restarted towards the adjoining Bella-Muro station, and reached a speed of about .
The station masters of Balvano and Bella-Muro were blamed because they did not act to determine the location of the train when it appeared late on the roadmap. However, in the wartime confusion it was usual for communications to be irregular, and trains could be greatly delayed. It was not uncommon that it would take over two hours to travel the mountainous between the two stations.
The staff of the train and of the stations along the route were also blamed, because they allowed such a heavy train to continue even if they knew that its engines were not powerful enough. However the provisions for the train came straight from the Allied Command, so railway workers could not stop the train and change its composition. The Command itself organized a train to check the condition of the disaster, with staff equipped with oxygen masks, which recognized the actual development of abnormal amounts of toxic gases.
thumb|Transportation of the victims to the common grave
Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane denied all responsibility, claiming that in the complex end-of-war set-up (where Italian authorities coexisted with the US command) they could not even immediately determine who had the responsibility for the management of one particular train. However the company could be blamed because at that time, despite the high demand on the route between Naples and Potenza, there was only one scheduled passenger train (train 8021), which left from Naples twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which prompted an increase in illegal ridership on freight trains.
In attempt to prevent criticism, the Ministry of Treasury issued to the families of all identified victims the same compensation which was given for war victims (although it was paid more than 15 years afterwards).
Regulation changes
After the disaster, a limit of was introduced on the entire line. In addition, for particularly heavy trains requiring two locomotives, a composition of an American diesel locomotive and an Italian steam locomotive was used in place of a double steam drive. Furthermore, at the south exit of the Armi tunnel a permanent guard post was established, which allowed trains to enter the gallery only when exhaust gases from previous trains had cleared.
The guard post remained in place until 1959, when all steam trains were banned from the line. The weight regulations were repealed in 1994, when the line was electrified.
In popular culture
- "Galleria dele Armi" - song by American artist Terry Allen from the album Human Remains (1996).
- "The Black Market Express" - episode about the Balvano train disaster from the documentary Disasters of the Century (2000), aired on Canadian network History.
See also
- Lists of rail accidents