Lots of dead people. The hand of Allah no doubt smiting hidden infidels in the villages.
Al Jazeera wrote:An estimated 200 people have been killed and up to 400 others injured when runaway rail wagons loaded with sulphur, petrol and fertiliser derailed and exploded in northeast Iran.
"Five villages were destroyed," the head of disasters in Khorassan province, Vahid Barakchi, was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency.
"The level of this is massive and beyond our preliminary assessments.
"Our rescue workers workers are trying to remove more than 350 injured people to hospitals in Mashhad and Neyshabour," he added.
"The explosion happened at a time when the firefighters and the rescue workers were trying to put out the fire," the official said.
"A number of the firefighters and local villagers were killed in the explosion."
Aljazeera's correspondent reported that 280 people are still trapped under the rubble.
Among the casualties, most of whom were firefighters, were the governor and mayor of Neyshabour, along with other officials of Mashad city, the correspondent said.
The toll is expected to rise.
The correspondent said 48 of the 52 wagons of the train went up in smoke.
Glass windows of houses, more than 10km away from the explosion site, were shattered, the correspondent reported.
Wagons derailed
The wagons were loaded with
sulphur, petrol and fertiliser
The massive blast occurred at Khayyam station, near the town of Neyshabour and was heard in the provincial capital of Mashhad, some 75km away, IRNA said.
Local officials said the rail wagons, which were parked in a nearby station, began rolling away in the early hours of the morning.
The wagons then derailed and a fire began, drawing firefighters and curious onlookers to the scene.
When the explosion occurred, the Seismological unit of Tehran University recorded an earth tremor measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale in the same area - possibly a reading sparked by the force of the blast.
Head of disasters *snicker*
*ahem*
anyway, sad story. so many people...speculation is that a tremor may have derailed the train.
Fuck that's depressing. Iran is a shithole as it is, nothing worse than monthy national disasters like they seem to have.
WE, however, do meddle in the affairs of others.
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Watching this on the BBC, the damage doesn't look all that bad after the fact.. Must have been one hell of an incendiary explosion.
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Sea Skimmer wrote:Watching this on the BBC, the damage doesn't look all that bad after the fact.. Must have been one hell of an incendiary explosion.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Even after the big earthquake I thought to myself "Self," I said, "how can 20,000 people have been living in THAT?"
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Actually, in reports on NPR, locals reported that when the explosion went off, they thought that indeed it was a tremor, and it registered on the richter scale (Which in and of itself isn't all that surprising.) but still...
What I find interesting is the part in the CNN Report about the railcars being on a hill, disconnected from an engine... and yet they 'began rolling in the early morning hours'.
Call me paranoid, but if a railcar's brakes are set, and there's no engine driving the cars... they shouldn't have moved.
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LadyTevar wrote:Call me paranoid, but if a railcar's brakes are set, and there's no engine driving the cars... they shouldn't have moved.
Probably a malfunction. Given the country I'm honestly not surprised. Iranian rail companies probably don't have or can measure up to strict strict safety protocols. The pyro's dreamworth of chemicals carried could also be a testament to negligence.
LadyTevar wrote:What I find interesting is the part in the CNN Report about the railcars being on a hill, disconnected from an engine... and yet they 'began rolling in the early morning hours'.
Call me paranoid, but if a railcar's brakes are set, and there's no engine driving the cars... they shouldn't have moved.
The brakes could have been really crappy and worn out, and just broke after years of neglect and disrepair.
There's going to be an "investigation" as to why there was train filled to the brim with explosive and combustable materials. Wonder if they'll actually do anything, or just cover up general criminal negligence and find a scapegoat.
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Five villages may seem alot, but think of how...powerful some of these chemicals that are transported by rail can be. A year ago, a Canadian Pacific train derailed near Belleville, Ontario, and several tanker cars exploded in the process (there was also a major spill but thats beside the point). The explosion was powerful enough to fling one of the the tanker cars more than a kilometer away! (Your average tanker car weighs more than 20 tons unloaded, and more than 100 tons fully loaded).
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Ma Deuce wrote:Five villages may seem alot, but think of how...powerful some of these chemicals that are transported by rail can be. A year ago, a Canadian Pacific train derailed near Belleville, Ontario, and several tanker cars exploded in the process (there was also a major spill but thats beside the point). The explosion was powerful enough to fling one of the the tanker cars more than a kilometer away! (Your average tanker car weighs more than 20 tons unloaded, and more than 100 tons fully loaded).
holy shit! Imagine the reaction of some average guy driving down the road in Rural Ontario and a fucking rail car comes flying out of the sky.
you know what makes me nervous? CNG depots. I live 2 miles from a tank farm..... if that ever went up it would flatten half of Rhode Island.
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the thing is, almost every major city with a port or a large rail yard has one. This just happens to be a large one that serves half of New England. From my building i can watch the tankers travel up the bay under coast guard escort.
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Col. Crackpot wrote:holy shit! Imagine the reaction of some average guy driving down the road in Rural Ontario and a fucking rail car comes flying out of the sky.
Now that you mention that (rail cars falling out of the sky), it reminds me of a derailment that happened right here in Whitby a month ago. Two multi-platform spine cars loaded with shipping containers derailed and fell off an overpass over a major street. Two people were killed when a 25-ton shipping container landed right on their car. Fortunately, those containers were only carrying paper. Imagine if, umm... some other kind of cargo was spilled (or exploded) on that street?
The thing that I found unerving about the Belleville derailment is that I live along the same Toronto-Montreal line on which the accident took place. Since the train was an eastbound, it would have passed through my neighbourhood (I live only about half a km from the tracks) before reaching Belleville...
It's hard not to think about the hellish chemicals that run through your neighborhood every day, and what would happen if they spilled. Oh well, there's one bright side to train derialing in my neighborhood: The local Jehovah's Witnesses kingdom hall could get taken out .
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I live less than a mile next to one of those depots. The threat of them blowing up is minimal, so meh.
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That's one hell of catastrophe, jeez. 
What're those?
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