On February 17, 1982, two grannies-cleaners were called. They covered the pools of blood with sawdust and then wiped them away.
......
It took the passengers a few seconds to realize the danger of the situation in which they found themselves. The panic began. Those above heard the screams of people from below. Many tried to jump from the escalator onto the next one, or at least onto the plastic balustrade separating the escalators. Then it turns out that by all standards it had a coating that was too thin - 3 mm, which is why it broke, and people ended up in the resulting hole-trap. Someone couldn't resist and rolled on his back past the streetlights and down into chaos...
And down there, a bloody human mess was brewing.
......
...the collapsed stage is number 96. And the steps, unrestrained by nothing, are still rushing down, along with the people. Someone was lucky, he fell on the platform and managed to crawl away...
from here (links) rjohnson about Ulaanbaatar Metro!)
Here is a clipping from “Evening” dated February 18, 1992, discovered in my stash. There are two pictures for it (Vrez.jpg, and Eskalat.jpg) By the way, a few seconds after scanning, the clipping, which had lived for seven years, ceased its unblemished existence, having been filled with paint from the cartridge... :-(
Investigation "VM": ten years later
Tragedy at Aviamotornaya
Alexander DANILKIN
IN THE PICTURE: and today it is under repair - escalator No. 4.
Photo by R. FEDOROV.
A woman with a backpack stood on the step below me - already in the hospital I learned that she had died. The major stood behind me - he also died... (From the testimony of a witness).
Anyone you talk to is surprised: has it really been ten years? Ten... Exactly ten since then, a chic skimpy, not really revealing message shot out from the most inconspicuous newspaper corner. Word of mouth spread rumors throughout Moscow about a tragedy in the metro at the Aviamotornaya station that same evening. They were all monstrously fantastic. Suffice it to say that “enemy radio voices” broadcast that evening about the deaths of hundreds of people.
Almost every storyteller had his own version. I had to deal with one of them, which, by the way, is the most widespread among the Moscow people; meet now, while collecting material for this article. Namely: escalators of a new design were installed on the Kalininsky Radius metro line, and they were the reason for everything. Moreover, they knew that their “designers at one time received the Lenin Prize for their work, and then went off to the Middle East.” The second in line “culprit” was the duty officer, who “bewildered, while dozens of people fell into the underworld of the machine room” and, as if in a giant meat grinder, were ground by a giant mechanism”...
Scary. After that day, by the way, the number of passengers in the metro sharply decreased, albeit for a short time. But the official bodies were silent. A week, a month, six months. The investigation into the circumstances was completed by November 1982. The results, as happened for many years, were not widely disseminated. And the relatives of the dead, the maimed, and everyone else were waiting for them. Because the metro for Moscow is the metro, and it concerns almost everyone. But just the opposite happened. Already now, ten years later, I learned this from my interlocutors... For example, here. Most of those injured that evening were employees of enterprises located near Aviamotornaya. It just so happened: they all either go home after a hard day. After the tragedy, some organizations whose employees died in the accident... were prohibited from posting obituaries (“Why bother people?”). And many ambulance crews called that evening were not even informed when called what had happened...
Now, ten years later, such criminal behavior in front of the memory of the victims and their loved ones seems impossible, and this makes you feel a sense of bitter satisfaction. Times have come completely different, and we recognize ourselves as different people.
And then... There probably wasn’t a person in Moscow who didn’t touch on this topic in conversation at least once. But the officialdom did not want to notice anything. However, is this the first time night blindness has suddenly attacked all of us? Well, as far as I know, no one, even in our new society laced with glasnost, has ever suffered for the deliberate concealment of information.
It’s just that that evening, February 17, 1982, two granny cleaners were called. They covered the pools of blood with sawdust and then wiped them away. And with this, the authorities thought the memories of what happened could be completed. But a debt to memory? And what about the nightmares that still haunt two hundred people who were participants in the tragedy and survived?
How it was
Frankly, for me, even after getting acquainted with many documents and talking with many people, not everything is still clear. But let’s leave professional experts delving into the technical reasons. What we have left is the most valuable thing - eyewitness accounts. At the top, at the metro station, “they saw on that February evening, the same as today, approaches crowded with ambulances, police cordon, excited crowds of people: “What happened?!” Here, at the top, no one really knew anything yet knew. An accident in the subway, and that’s all. The fewer answers people received, the more terrible pictures appeared in their imaginations...
This morning began quite normally for the Aviamotornaya metro station. At five o'clock the duty officer inspected the station, the mechanics and those on duty at the escalators soon took their jobs. According to the instructions, test runs are required. By six o'clock passengers began to appear, but there was no influx. Escalator No. 4, the farthest one on the left side (if you go down), has not yet been turned on; we made do with others. By the way, metro commuters don’t say the word “escalator” in everyday life. They say: "car".
Rush hours passed without incident, all the cars worked properly, sleepy passengers, pushing each other, hurried to get to their shifts. The station staff worked until lunch and, replacing each other, ran out to have a snack. We also had to survive the evening rush hour, a nervous and tense time, even if everything was going as normal.
Then, as the investigation progresses, it will become clear who was doing what after lunch. And at the hour of the accident - every second... At 16.30 it was decided to turn on the fourth car in descent mode. At 4:40 p.m., the station attendant approached the person on duty at the escalator below. We found out: everything is fine everywhere. Fifteen minutes later, here, on Aviamotornaya, perhaps the most tragic scene in the entire history of the Moscow metro will happen - and it lasted only 110 seconds.
Witness LOROTEEVA I.Yu.: We stepped onto the escalator and managed to go down quite a bit, 5-8 meters, when the right handrail began to stop. Finally he froze completely. At the moment the handrail stopped, the escalator began to increase its speed. At the very bottom I will note that. the handrail was removed from the guide and hung as if it had been repaired...
Yes, yes, the death of people, chilling screams, pieces of human brain on the floor - it all started with a handrail that slipped off. Experts will later say that it broke due to insufficient rigidity and lack of means to control its tension. However, why did this handrail come off? I still didn’t get a definite answer.
What happened next?.. Here is the expert opinion, which will then be repeated in the court verdict:
“After the handrail came down, the locking device was activated and the main drive motor was switched off, and the activated service brake did not stop the staircase.” In other words, the miraculous staircase, accelerating its movement, not restrained by anything, but rather pushed by the mass of passengers on it, rushed down. Here are the feelings of the people who stood on its steps:
SHCHERBAKOV S.B.: Our escalator began to increase speed - I noticed this by the flashing of faces on the neighboring escalator.
When the people standing on this escalator noticed something was wrong, many rushed up, against the grain, but...
MARFIN A.M.: I also tried to run up, but the standing passengers interfered and eventually knocked me down. I only remember that my left hand got caught between the handrail and the steps, because the partitions were broken.
But the tragedy of the situation has not yet reached everyone.
SHNEIDERMAN A.M.: When our escalator began to increase speed, the passengers next to us smiled:
You'll get there faster! We flew the last part of the journey at tremendous speed. Right at the landing, my back was turned, and I fell into the rubble as fast as I could...
Everything flashed like in a movie.
KURSKY V.P.: I had this feeling: on the neighboring escalator (which also worked downwards) people went up...
KOROBOV V.A.: The speed of the escalator was so high that it was humming. This noise kept growing...
After the accident, experts will calculate that the speed of the “furious” escalator was two and a half times higher than normal. It took the passengers a few seconds to realize the danger of the situation in which they found themselves. The panic began. Those above heard the screams of people from below. Many tried to jump from the escalator onto the next one, or at least onto the plastic balustrade separating the escalators. Then it turns out that by all standards it had a coating that was too thin - 3 mm, which is why it broke, and people ended up in the resulting hole-trap. Someone couldn't resist and rolled on his back past the streetlights and down into chaos...
And down there, a bloody human mess was brewing. No, there was no huge gaping hole there, and no one fell into the underworld of mechanisms. But the enormous speed did not allow the passengers to jump onto the platform in time. One woman fell, followed by others... Someone didn’t have time to pull back his leg, and now someone’s boots were pulled under the metal comb in front of the platform, clothes and someone’s diplomats also fell there... The metal is twisting, and now and the escalator step rears up, cracks, followed by another. Then it turns out that... The destroyed stage is number 96. And the steps, unrestrained by nothing, are still rushing down, along with the people. Someone was lucky, he fell on the platform and managed to crawl away...
But where is the duty officer, the one sitting at the bottom of the escalator? It was he who was later made one of the “switchmen” in rumors: he was confused, he ran away... Everything was wrong, the duty officer turned out to be on the spot, and then the investigation had no complaints against him. Quite quickly it dawned on him that escalator No. 4 had “revolted.” I pulled the service brake handle on the remote control... The steps continued to roll down. Then he jumped out of his booth and rushed to the balustrade, to the emergency brake handle. The effect was the same: the emergency brake did not work...
GURKOV V.M. When the steps. where I was standing, they didn’t come out horizontally, and 5-6 people fell on me. Many fell on their backs. I was knocked down and fell on my back. I was dragged forward, I heard screams and the cracking of clothes being torn...
MIRONOV M. A.: I didn’t notice how I found myself in front of a crowd of passengers that had formed at the exit from the escalator. I flew into this pile at high speed and I don’t know how I got through it. I found myself at the bottom of the escalator steps. The step tore my back and tore my trousers. I remember how I lay on my back and was carried towards the metal teeth of the comb. My right foot fell under the balustrade, and I felt it break on the counter. The fracture was open, I felt the sharp edge of the bone...
A special story happened to the last witness: his right leg was caught between the exit platform and the step. When all this mechanical bacchanalia ended and they managed to remove the corpses of the dead and transport the wounded to hospitals, M. Mironov was still sitting in the same position, with his leg clamped. The metro workers had neither the means nor the mechanisms at hand to quickly free them. This was done only after two hours. This delay subsequently became the reason for the amputation of the leg...
All this is evidence of the living. The dead won't tell anymore.
When the duty officer from below was able to reach the escalator driver, he jumped out into the machine room and turned off the control circuit breaker. Only then did the unruly escalator freeze. Although there were very few people on it by that time.
In November 1982, at a meeting of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, the exact number of victims was announced: eight dead, 30 people received injuries of varying severity.
But what exactly caused this accident with such terrible consequences? The court agreed with the experts' conclusions: the immediate technical cause of the accident was a malfunction of the service brake and forced disablement of the emergency brake. In Russian terms, the reason turned out to be simple: one did not adjust the brake, the other did not check it in the morning before work, did not take measurements and test runs, two bosses formally checked their subordinates...
OK it's all over Now. Since then, the culprits named by the court managed to serve their sentences (I did not set out to name the names of the culprits in this material, the main thing was to tell how and what happened), the wounds of the cripples healed, the pain subsided in the memory... But the universal sin of silence remained about the tragedy. Let us name at least ten years later, on this sad anniversary, the names of our fellow countrymen who died that February evening at the Aviamotornaya metro station. And let it be, although belated, but still a tribute to them. Here are the names:
Ulybina Lidiya Kuzminichna, Pavlov Alexander Yuryevich, Skobeleva Alexandra Alekseevna, Uvarov Viktor Petrovich, Mulkidzhan Grigory Aleksandrovich, Komashko Larisa Ivanovna, Romanyuk Valentina Nikitichna, Kuzma Elizaveta Yuryevna.
The Moscow Metro administration did not want to talk to me about what happened or comment on the event: there was a court verdict, there was an investigation...
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The immediate cause of the accident was a fracture of stage No. 96. The damaged step when passing the lower entrance platform caused deformation and destruction of the comb, and the protection for the rise of the bottom steps and the entrance platform was activated. When the protective devices were triggered, the main drive electric motor turned off and the service brake electromagnet turned on, but due to insufficient braking torque, the braking distance significantly exceeded the set value and amounted to about eleven meters. The emergency brake did not turn on, since the speed of the staircase did not reach the response value of the emergency brake sensor, and the electrical circuit did not provide for monitoring the state of the service brake of the escalators of this series.
The tragedy was caused by both the design flaws of the escalator and the notorious “human factor”.
After the accident, the metro management found itself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, all the ET series escalators should have been immediately checked, since there were more than enough complaints about them, but for this it would have been necessary to close more than a dozen stations, and the Kalininskaya line completely.
Yu.V. Senyushkin, the head of the Moscow Metro, sent letters to the City Committee of the CPSU and the executive committee of the Moscow City Council with a request to resolve the issue of completely closing the Kalininskaya line during repairs:
“Taking into account that, according to the conclusion of the forensic technological examination, the operation of steps with melting electric rivet joints seems dangerous and they should be replaced immediately, I request that the steps of the escalators at the Aviamotornaya, Shosse Entuziastov, Ploshchad Ilyich and Marksistskaya stations be dismantled and strengthened The Ministry of Heavy Machinery should allow them to close the Kalininskaya line.
Naturally, neither the city authorities, nor, especially, the party authorities, could agree to such a scandal. Only the Aviamotornaya station was closed for three weeks, from May 12 to May 28. The work was organized around the clock, in three shifts, in teams of 70 people, seven days a week. The shifts were led by experienced specialists; engineers from the Metro Administration and the Main Metro Administration of the Ministry of Railways spent days and nights at the station. Repair personnel were transported by special buses, and free food was provided. The work was coordinated by a special headquarters. Escalators at other stations were repaired gradually.
About 38 years ago, at the Aviamotornaya station of the Moscow metro, several dozen people were injured and killed due to an escalator accident.
The worst accident in the history of the Moscow metro occurred where no one expected it. On February 17, 1982, one of the escalator handrails broke off at the Aviamotornaya station. As a result, the adhesion of the staircase parts to the electric motor was lost, and the entire structure, under the weight of people, rushed down, rapidly picking up speed. In fact, to prevent such situations, escalators are also equipped with emergency brakes. One main and one spare. On that ill-fated day, both did not work.
As far as I understand, when descending the escalator is slowed down by an electric motor, which switches to generator mode. In this way, a small power station is formed to save energy, and the automatic motor control maintains a uniform speed of the escalator (0.75-1.0) m/s.
At 16:30, due to the beginning influx of passengers returning from work, the ill-fated escalator at the Aviamotornaya station was turned on for descent. The escalator operated without passengers for several minutes - this is according to the instructions. Soon the escalator was opened and the first passengers stepped onto the stairs. Fifteen minutes later, as a result of a breakdown, the escalator began to move downwards under the weight of people, picking up speed.
The escalator's staircase reached a speed 2.5 times higher than the nominal speed; about a hundred people were unable to stay on their feet and began to fall, blocking the passage in the lower exit area. In a few seconds, almost all the passengers on the escalator rolled down.
The tragedy lasted 110 seconds. The escalator attendant did everything in his power, but was powerless. Noticing the abnormal movement of the ladder, he tried to stop the car with the service brake from the remote control in his cab, but to no avail. Jumping out of the cab, the duty officer rushed to the balustrade to apply the emergency brake, but this did not help... At 17:10, the entrance to the station was limited, at 17:35 it was blocked, and ten minutes later the station was completely closed. Trains passed the Aviamotornaya station without stopping. Ambulance teams were called to the station.
After this tragedy, rumors circulated in Moscow for a long time about the painful death of people who tried to jump out of the rushing stairs, broke through the plastic balustrade and fell on the rotating gears of the cars. Fortunately, the bloody meat grinder turned out to be just a figment of human imagination.
In reality, of course, no one was drawn into the mechanisms. People were injured and died in the resulting crush. Some passengers, trying to get out of it, climbed onto the balustrade. The thin, only 3 mm, plastic lining could not stand it and broke, but underneath there were not terrible mechanisms that turned respectable citizens into bloody mincemeat, but stable concrete foundations. The people who fell from a two-meter height received bruises, but all remained alive.
In the 1980s, newspapers didn't talk much about such things. The next day, only a few lines of notice were published in Evening Moscow: “On February 17, 1982, an escalator accident occurred at the Aviamotornaya station of the Kalinin radius of the Moscow metro. There are casualties among the passengers. The causes of the accident are being investigated." Only nine months later, at a meeting of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, the exact number of victims was announced: 8 dead and 30 wounded.
As investigators found out, the reason was the incorrect operation of new brakes installed on the escalators of the Aviamotornaya station in December 1981. Metro employees, not familiar with the new requirements, regulated their work according to old instructions. As a result, the escalators operated in emergency mode for three months. During the accident, one of the steps broke, and as it passed the bottom ridge of the escalator, it deformed and destroyed it. The protection tripped and the electric motor turned off. But the emergency electromagnetic brake was able to develop the necessary braking torque only when the speed of the escalator reached a speed of more than 2.5 m/s. But the mechanical emergency brake did not work because the belt speed did not reach the threshold value.
A very difficult situation has arisen for the metro management. There have been numerous complaints about escalators of this series, and, of course, after the incident it was necessary to check all of them. But then almost two dozen stations would have to be closed, which would paralyze the work of the metro and lead to a scandal.
As a result, it was decided to close only Aviamotornaya. The repairs lasted three weeks and went on around the clock; teams of 70 people worked at the station in three shifts, seven days a week. At the remaining stations, escalators were repaired gradually, strengthening the steps, modernizing the brakes, changing the main drive shafts and balustrade panels.
P.S. I remembered this horror after the tragedy that occurred on an escalator in the Rome subway. The Italians make the balustrade strong. Not a single CSKA fan failed. Maybe now everyone is taking into account the experience of the tragedy of the Aviamotornaya metro station?
I didn’t know about the tragedy at the Aviamotornaya station from the newspapers. I studied nearby at the institute. The scariest story I've ever heard is "People were counted by their hats."
IN 16 hours 30 minutes Due to the beginning influx of passengers returning from work, escalator No. 4 of the Aviamotornaya station was turned on for descent. The escalator operated without passengers for several minutes. Soon, the escalator was opened and the first passengers stepped onto the stairs. Fifteen minutes later, as a result of a breakdown of the mechanism, the clutch of the staircase trolleys with the engine was lost, and the escalator, under the weight of people, began to move down, picking up speed.
From the examination report:
“At 5 p.m. on February 17 this year. When the escalator was operating to descend passengers, the right handrail came off the guides, the locking device was activated, and the main drive electric motor was switched off. As a result of the violations, the service brake that was put into action did not develop a braking torque and did not ensure stopping of the staircase. Under the weight of the passengers (about 12 tons), accelerated movement of the staircase began, but the emergency brake, which had been disabled earlier, also did not stop the escalator.”
The staircase developed a speed 2-2.4 times higher than the nominal speed; about a hundred people were unable to stay on their feet and began to fall, blocking the passage in the area of the lower exit platform. In a few seconds, almost all the passengers on the escalator rolled down.
The tragedy lasted 110 seconds. The escalator attendant did everything in his power, but was powerless. Noticing the abnormal movement of the ladder, he tried to stop the car with the service brake from the remote control in his cab, but to no avail. Jumping out of the cab, the duty officer rushed to the balustrade to apply the emergency brake, but this did not help... At 17:10, the entrance to the station was limited, at 17:35 it was blocked, and ten minutes later the station was completely closed. Trains passed without stopping.
The news of the disaster spread throughout the city instantly. “Vecherka,” almost the only newspaper, published a laconic message, which noted: “On February 17, 1982, at the Aviamotornaya station of the Kalinin radius of the Moscow metro, an escalator accident occurred. There are casualties among the passengers. The causes of the accident are being investigated." Only nine months later, at a meeting of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, the exact number of victims was announced: 8 dead and 30 wounded.
Contrary to the rumors that flooded the city, people did not fall into the engine room, and no one was sucked into the machinery. All eight people who died were crushed by the mass of people who piled on them. Some passengers jumped onto the escalator balustrade in an attempt to escape. The plastic sheets of the cladding could not stand it and fell through (that’s where the rumors come from), but those who failed got away with only minor bruises, since there is a concrete base just a few meters under the balustrade itself and there are no moving parts.
Literally two days before the accident, it was inspected, adjusted and checked for brake operation. The work was carried out by master Zagvozdkin. On the morning of February 17, after an overnight stay, driver Krysanov tested the car with the braking distance measured. The results were satisfactory.
The investigation that began revealed that in December 1981, service brakes of a new system were installed on four escalators at the Aviamotornaya station, which had to be adjusted in compliance with the requirements of the “Operating Instructions for Tunnel Escalators ET-2 and ET-3 T-65215IE”, developed by SKB escalator construction of the Leningrad production association "Escalator". However, the foreman for operating the escalators at this station, V.P. Zagvozdkin adjusted the service brakes not according to the instructions he had, but according to instructions relating to another type of escalator (LT-4), which he had previously serviced.
Therefore, the investigation came to the conclusion that in the period from December 1981 to the day of the disaster inclusive, all four Aviamotornaya escalators were operated in emergency mode.
The immediate cause of the accident was a fracture of stage No. 96. The damaged step when passing the lower entrance platform caused deformation and destruction of the comb, and the protection for the rise of the bottom steps and the entrance platform was activated. When the protective devices were triggered, the main drive electric motor turned off and the service brake electromagnet turned on, but due to insufficient braking torque, the braking distance significantly exceeded the set value and amounted to about eleven meters. The emergency brake did not turn on, since the speed of the staircase did not reach the response value of the emergency brake sensor, and the electrical circuit did not provide for monitoring the state of the service brake of the escalators of this series.
The tragedy was caused by both the design flaws of the escalator and the notorious “human factor”.
After the accident, the metro management found itself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, all the ET series escalators should have been immediately checked, since there were more than enough complaints about them, but for this it would have been necessary to close more than a dozen stations, and the Kalininskaya line completely.
Yu.V. Senyushkin, the head of the Moscow Metro, sent letters to the City Committee of the CPSU and the executive committee of the Moscow City Council with a request to resolve the issue of completely closing the Kalininskaya line during repairs:
“Taking into account that, according to the conclusion of the forensic technological examination, the operation of steps with melting electric rivet joints seems dangerous and they should be replaced immediately, I request that the escalator steps at the Aviamotornaya, Shosse Entuziastov, Ploshchad Ilyich and Marksistskaya stations be dismantled and strengthened The Ministry of Heavy Machinery should allow them to close the Kalininskaya line.
Naturally, neither the city authorities, nor, especially, the party authorities, could agree to such a scandal. Only the Aviamotornaya station was closed for three weeks, from May 12 to May 28. The work was organized around the clock, in three shifts, in teams of 70 people, seven days a week. The shifts were led by experienced specialists; engineers from the Metro Administration and the Main Metro Administration of the Ministry of Railways spent days and nights at the station. Repair personnel were transported by special buses, and free food was provided. The work was coordinated by a special headquarters. Escalators at other stations were repaired gradually.
After the accident at the Aviamotornaya station, the Ministry of Tyazhmash, together with the Ministry of Railways, outlined urgent measures to improve the reliability of ET series escalators. The stages were strengthened, service brakes were modernized with changes in the electrical circuit; the main drive shafts were replaced, the balustrade panels were replaced from 3 mm to 8-10 mm.
In conclusion, let us remember the names of people who paid for our safety at the cost of their lives:
Komashko Larisa Ivanovna
Kuzma Elizaveta Yurievna
Mulkidzhan Grigory Alexandrovich
Pavlov Alexander Yurievich
Romanyuk Valentina Nikitichna
Skobeleva Alexandra Alekseevna
Uvarov Viktor Petrovich
Ulybina Lidiya Kuzminichna.
Information was used from an article in the Moscow Industrial Newspaper No. 19 (184) May 23 - 29, 2002.
During the Soviet era, many tragedies were tried to be hidden from the population. There was no talk about them on radio or television, and practically no newspapers wrote about them, so all that remained was word of mouth. It is not surprising that over time, such incidents turned into rumors and legends, about which only a few had reliable information. Let's find out about the tragedy in the Moscow metro at the Aviamotornaya station, which was kept silent in the USSR for 9 months, protecting the people from “socially dangerous negativity.”
February 17, 1982
The photo shows the escalator at Aviamotornaya today. The tragedy happened on the fourth - in the photo on the far right, disabled
The worst accident in the history of the Moscow metro occurred at Aviamotornaya during evening rush hour. It was 5 o’clock in the evening, and the escalator leading down to the trains at the Aviamotornaya metro station (at that time one of the longest in Moscow) was filled with people coming from work. As always at this time, the metro was filled with people and the station attendant turned on the reserve escalator so as not to create a crowd. Less than half an hour later, one of the most tragic events in the entire history of the Moscow metro took place. On one of the escalators going down, the right handrail came off.
Bloody meat grinder at Aviamotornaya
Due to a breakdown of the trolley mechanism, the stairs lost grip with the engine, and the escalator slid sharply down, picking up speed. The ladder rushed at a speed 2.5 times higher than normal. At the moment when the handrail almost stopped, the staircase itself, accelerating under the weight of the passengers, rushed down. The emergency interlock device shut down the engine. In general, to prevent such situations, escalators are equipped with brakes. One main and one spare. On that fateful day, both of them did not work due to their incorrect configuration and maintenance.
Some of the passengers in panic rushed up the steps, against the movement of the escalator, crashing into those who were trying to stay on their feet. People lost their balance and fell down, sliding down the steps and blocking the passage at the lower exit platform, and the monster moving at great speed continued to dump more and more victims into this “heap and small”. The total weight of the passengers on the escalator was 12 tons, and almost all of them formed a mountain of bodies at the bottom of the escalator in a few seconds.
Hearing the screams below, those at the top jumped in horror onto the balustrade and tried to get over to the adjacent escalator, but the plastic covering, only 3 mm thick, broke under their weight, and they fell under the balustrade. At the same time, shoes, clothes, and bags were pulled under the metal comb of the “enraged” escalator. The steps cracked and broke, “reared up on their hind legs.” People received cuts, open fractures - hence the “puddles of blood”, which, according to horror stories, were so ingrained into the floor that the grandmother-cleaners could not wipe them away, no matter how hard they tried.
The tragedy lasted 110 seconds - almost 2 minutes, until, finally, the escalator mechanisms were manually shut down in the machine room. At 17.10 the entrance to the station was limited, at 17.35 it was blocked. Ten minutes later the station itself was closed, trains passed by without stopping. Ambulance crews were called to the station.
According to eyewitnesses, as a result of a break in a crowded escalator, several hundred people fell into the mechanism that continued to rotate, dozens were crushed, and more than a hundred were maimed. All this happened in front of people moving on a parallel escalator. Panic arose among them, causing additional casualties: several people died in the crush... One of the victims, whose leg was caught between the exit platform and the step, waited another 2 hours until tools were found to free him, and because of such a long delay lost his leg.
A mystery shrouded in darkness
Authorities did not report the incident to the public. In the 1980s, newspapers didn't talk much about such things. The next day, only a few lines of notice were published in Vechernaya Moskva: “ On February 17, 1982, an escalator accident occurred at the Aviamotornaya station of the Kalinin radius of the Moscow Metro. There are casualties among the passengers. The causes of the accident are being investigated" The short message seemed to be secretly printed the next day by Vecherka, and not even under the heading “Incident”, but simply and facelessly - “Information”.
After this tragedy, rumors circulated in Moscow for a long time about the painful death of people who tried to jump out of the rushing stairs, broke through the plastic balustrade and fell on the rotating gears of the cars.
So the escalator on that ill-fated day became the killer of almost forty people, about one and a half hundred were wounded and maimed. Photographs hung in the lobbies of enterprises in mourning frames with condolences “from the party committee and the local committee” - that’s all with which the state honored the memory of its next unlucky “cogs”, because nothing had the right to darken the radiance of the “model communist city”, in which the metro has always been on a special account - as it was almost the only thing that could still be used to conquer a foreign guest.
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