Seven cars of a passenger train left the tracks in Russia’s Ulyanovsk region early on April 3, sending dozens of people to hospital wards and first-aid points. Train No. 302, running from Chelyabinsk to Moscow with more than 400 passengers aboard, derailed at 6:26 a.m. near Bryandino station, officials said, and several carriages overturned onto their sides. Passengers got out on their own, some of them through the windows, according to accounts from the first hours after the accident.
The injury count moved upward through the morning. Initial reports put the number at seven; authorities later revised the figure to 24, four of the injured being children, according to Anadolu. No one was killed, officials said. The governor of the Chelyabinsk region, where the train began its journey, said two people suffered fractures, one to a leg and one to a collarbone, while the rest of the injuries were contusions.
The response unfolded quickly for a rural stretch of line. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations evacuated passengers from the site using two trains and buses, a temporary shelter opened in the village of Bryandino, and TASS reported more than 100 rescuers working with 32 pieces of equipment, a tally Anadolu later put above 150 specialists and roughly 40 machines as the operation expanded. Local authorities said passengers would be carried on to Ulianovsk-Central Station, with a medical point there to check them and help them continue on other trains.
Officials moved on the legal track as well. The Transport Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee both opened inquiries into compliance with railway safety and operating rules, and rail traffic on the affected section was suspended. No exact cause had been announced in the first reports; that question, officials said, was for the inquiries to answer.
For the passengers, the lasting image of the morning may be simpler than any inquiry file: eight carriages bound for the capital, and seven of them on their sides in the dawn light near a village station. The tally of the hurt could still change, officials cautioned, as hospitals in the region finished their checks. What was confirmed, within hours, was that no one had died, and that a routine overnight run had become the kind of morning Russia’s railway network works hard to avoid.
Sources
- Passenger train derails in Russia: 24 injured
- Injury toll rises to 35 after Ulyanovsk train derailment – VIDEO / UPDATED
