On March 3, 1944, the deadlist railway accident in Italian history occurred.

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List of rail accidents (1940–1949)

• March 3 – Italy – Balvano train disaster: 530 people riding a freight train die of carbon monoxide poisoning when the locomotive stalls in a tunnel. It is still Italy's deadliest railway disaster.

Balvano train disaster

Coordinates: 40°40'09"N 15°30'07"E


Some of the corpses gathered in the Balvano railway station

Details
Date: 3 March 1944, after 00:50
Location: Balvano, Basilicata
Statistics
Trains: 1
Deaths: 517 (official figure by Italian government)
Injured: 90 poisoned

The Balvano train disaster was the deadliest railway accident in Italian history and one of the worst railway disasters ever. It occurred on the night between 2–3 March 1944 in Balvano, Basilicata. 517 people in a steam-hauled, coal-burning freight train (mostly stowaways) died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a protracted stall in a tunnel.

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


The Balvano station master points out the direction by which the train left.
The tunnel shown is not the Armi tunnel, which is two kilometers further.

In 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 remarkable mass of 520 tonnes; 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 15 kilometres per hour (9.3 mph). After 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi) of travel, it approached the narrow and poorly ventilated Armi tunnel, which is 1,968 metres (2,152 yd) long with a 1.3% incline. As the engines entered the tunnel, the wheels started to slide on the rails (which were wet due to humidity), despite the use of sand boxes, and the train lost speed until it stopped, with almost all the cars inside the tunnel.

The air was already filled with smoke since another train had passed shortly before, and the drivers' effort to restart the train caused the locomotives to produce even more carbon monoxide–laden smoke. As a result, the crew and stowaways were asphyxiated, so slowly that they failed to realize what was happening to them. Most died in their sleep. Of the few survivors most were in the last few wagons, which were still in the open air.

At some point, the driver of the 476 locomotive tried to engage the reverse gear in an attempt to exit the tunnel, but he fainted before succeeding. Moreover, he could not communicate with the driver of the other engine (which in fact continued to push in the forward direction) because the 476 was an Austrian-built engine with right-hand drive, while the 480 had left-hand drive as usual in Italian railways.

At 05:10 the Balvano station master learned of the disaster from last car's brakeman, who had walked back to the station. At 05:25 a locomotive reached the site but the many corpses on the track prevented it from removing the train from the tunnel; only some forty survivors in the last wagons could be assisted. At 08:40 a second rescue team arrived which hauled the train back to the station. Among the crew, only the one brakeman, and the second locomotive's fireman, survived.

Due to the large number of corpses, the wartime lack of resources, and the poverty of many of the victims, only the train staff received a proper burial; stowaways were buried without a religious service in four common graves at the Balvano cemetery.

Responsibility


Victims of the disaster

The poisoning was the result of many factors. The root cause was the lack of supervision by railway authorities, who tolerated a large number of stowaways on the train. Contributing factors were the low-quality coal, the lack of ventilation in the tunnel, the wet rails, and the fact that the train had a double heading instead of a push–pull configuration.[4] The lack of coordination between the drivers of the two locomotives was the proximate cause. In addition, the death toll was aggravated by the delay in rescue efforts.

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