<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Romania took sides with the French-Anglo-Russian
\nalliance in August 1916 and formally entered World War One. In the wake of
\nnearly four months of violent fight, on December 6, 1916, the German army
\noccupied Bucharest. The Romanian authorities fled the capital city withdrawing
\nto Moldavia, in the north, but their withdrawal was simply chaotic. All
\nthroughout that chaotic period of time, in the last night of 1916, nearby Iasi,
\nthe most serious railway accident in Romanian history happened. About 1,000
\npeople lost their lives as an oversized and overloaded train derailed in the
\nlocality of Ciurea.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The historian Dorin Stanescu specializes in the
\nhistory of Romanian railways. He made an in-depth research of the great
\naccident. According to Dorin Stanescu, along a railway network of 1,330
\nkilometers in Moldavia, 1,000 locomotives and roughly 25,000 railroad carriages were
\npulled over, that is Romania’s entire railway fleet, which literally blocked the
\nrailroad lines, while the rolling of trains became very difficult. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dorin Stanescu:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As the Romanian army was withdrawing to
\nMoldavia, a train was departing from Galati on December 30, 1916, at a time
\nwhen the city of Galati was under the German bomb-shelling and the German
\noccupation of the city could hardly be avoided. The train was overloaded,
\nheading for Iasi. There was a couple of hours’ delay in the scheduled departure
\nof the train. It was an overcrowded train, since many civilians wanted to go to Iasi.
\nJoining them were GIs who were on leave and obviously had to return to their
\nmilitary units, there were also several Russian soldiers on board the train. We
\nmust say that among those who boarded that train there were such personalities
\nas that of former finance minister Emil Costinescu, then there was the daughter
\nof former French ambassador to Bucharest, Yvonne Blondel as well as the geographer
\nGeorge Valsan. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dorin Stanescu:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The train became overcrowded as
\nother carriages were added along the route, while people were literally storming
\nthose carriages. Very many people opted for boarding the train at all costs,
\nusing event the rooftops of the carriages. So from one railway station to the
\nnext the train was getting longer and got more and more crowded. Now, if we
\nthink of the size of the carriages that were rolling at that time and their
\navailable space and if we check the number of passengers as against the
\navailable compartments, the buffers-and-chain coupling system of the carriages
\nand the rooftops, and examining the accounts as regards the number of carriages,
\nwe may find out that no less than 5,000 people were on board the train, whereas
\nthe train had a seating capacity for no more than 1,000 people. Everybody was desperate
\nto flee Galati, while the GIs were desperate to make it to their military
\nunits.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On December 31, 1916, the train departing from Galati
\nand having Iasi as its destination point was reaching its final leg. But this
\nfinal part of the journey would be a tragical one. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dorin Stanescu:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On December 31, 1916, the train
\nreached the town of Barlad and was stationed there during the night of December
\n30 to December 31. The following day the train rolled on, there were 120
\nkilometers to roll before reaching Iasi. The train hit the railway station of
\nCiurea at about 12 am, the locality and the railway station were just a couple
\nof kilometers away from the city which was lying along a valley. It was a harsh
\nwinter and the snowfalls had been abundant. When the train began rolling
\ndownward along the slope, the mechanics activated the brake system.
\nUnfortunately, the train was so crowded that the people who were responsible
\nfor that could not activate the proper mechanism of the carriages which had
\nhand brakes that were manually operated for each carriage, so that the train could
\nbe slowed down. The train was rolling at high speed and ran off its rails. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the railway station of Ciurea, all the rails were
\nfull of passenger carriages and cistern tanks with a liquid cargo of oil. When
\nthe train ran off its rails it bumped into other carriages which caused a terrible deflagration. According to eyewitness accounts, the explosions were quite like
\na small-scale earthquake. Many people were thrown off in the snow but many more
\ndied because they were crushed between the carriages, while others got killed
\nin the explosions. Estimates of that time reported as many as 1,000 deaths.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The aftermath of the terrible accident was
\npredictable, and the survivors and their descendants claimed justice. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dorin
\nStanescu:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Quite a few of the victims or their successors tried to file lawsuits
\nagainst the Railway Company and the Romanian army to receive compensations. The
\ncase stalled, obviously, and the legal conclusion was that the territory was
\nunder the jurisdiction of the army and the damage fell under the category of
\nwar damage. Oftentimes the dead person takes all the blame, in Romanian
\nsociety. All the inquiry committee chose to say was that, because of the people
\non board who blocked the maneuvers the personnel was supposed to make, the
\ntrain could not be stopped. There is a similarity with another accident that
\nhappened in a similar context, this time in France. On December 12, 1917, in
\nthe region of Savoy, a train loaded with French soldiers who were on leave, as it was
\nrolling along a hill, ran off its rails; the aftermath of that accident was
\nabout the same, and so were the conclusions of the inquiry. Nobody was held
\naccountable for that tragedy. That train was also overcrowded and 400 people
\ndied. Scapegoat hunt back then was purposefully avoided, and it was the war
\nthat pleaded guilty. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The accident in Ciurea, on the New Year’s Eve of 1917,
\nwas quite uncommon at that time. However, the war itself is something which is
\nquite uncommon. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
World War One in Romania and its painful aftermath<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":50395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42881,30578,30786],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-131136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-cistern-tank","tag-railway","tag-world-war-one"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n