Crevalcore train crash
Encyclopedia
The Crevalcore train crash was a major railway accident
which occurred on 7 January 2005 on the Verona–Bologna railway
, Italy
, killing 17. It was one of the worst accidents in the recent history of the state railway company Ferrovie dello Stato
. In the accident, a cargo and a passenger train collided in dense fog after the passenger train's driver passed two red signals
, possibly as a result of an unwarranted assumption by the driver that the line was clear, despite the warning signals.
in the morning of 7 January, headed to San Zeno Falzano with a full load of girder
s. At the time of the accident, it was traveling at a speed estimated below 30 km/h on a single-rail stretch in the Verona-Bologna line near the abandoned station of Bolognina di Ronchi di Crevalcore
.
The area was covered by a dense fog, a common condition especially in winter in the Po valley
. Visibility was estimated at 50 meters or less.
At 12.50 a.m. Intercity 2225, a commuter passenger train, having left Verona at 11.39 and heading to Bologna
, collided head-on at high speed with the slow moving cargo train, breaking up on impact. The passenger cars were lifted by inertia
and piled up on top of each other. Some of them suffered extensive damage even though they were of a common steel-framed design which has proven itself safe since the early 1980s
.
The passenger train engine left the rails, leaving the first car fully exposed to the cargo train locomotive. The second car came to rest in an almost vertical condition.
s had to be towed by tractor
s provided by local farmers.
Early assessments led to estimate 13 deaths - including the four drivers of the trains - and over 60 injured. Five passengers had to be hospitalized in critical conditions. A toll-free number for relatives to receive information on victims and wounded was established. Fifty people escaped the crash unscathed and were brought to Crevalcore
by a bus provided by the comune
. They later reached their destination by another train.
Local supermarket
s set up a canteen service for the hundreds of rescuers and provided first necessities for survivors.
In the end, 17 were killed and more than 65 injured. Among the victims were all four train conductors (Vincenzo De Biase and Paolo Cinti from the Intercity, Equizio Abate and Ciro Cuccinello from the cargo).
The cargo engine had to be demolished in place, along with some of the cars.
Survivors' reactions were mixed: some of them displayed disbelief about the happening, while many were shocked into silence. Some exhibited irrational behaviors, such as crying for a miracle, or thanking the Virgin Mary while running in circles.
Feeling of powerlessness on the part of survivors who tried to help the injured was a major cause of post-traumatic disorders. Some survivors experienced so-called "survivor's guilt", believing that they could have given more help.
Fog framed a horrific panorama for the firemen and medical personnel reaching the scene. The ghostly wreck - much bigger than expected - emerged from the fog "like a movie scene" (as stated by a rescuer questioned by University psychologists), just four to five meters away from the torn carriages.
Rescuers who concentrated intently on their tasks were found to have coped better with the psychological pressure. Some firemen kept working well beyond usual limits, trying to overcome their feelings with excessive work. Less experienced or less well trained rescuers experienced confusion and trauma when confronted with the unexpected enormity of the tragedy; this led to logistic problems, slowing the response.
Hallucination
s were documented among some responders (for example, a severed human head was seen above the piled up coaches), inducing some cases of mass hysteria. Cries from the injured people were deemed a main cause of psychological breakdowns among the rescuers.
After the Crevalcore accident, new procedures of stress management and psychological counseling were developed to help responders better cope with the consequences arising from this sort of incident, moving from self-managed stress control (such as, for example, relying on the need to keep a "tough guy" stance in front of fellow responders) to a group-based approach (one such approach involves conducting "ceremonies" to help those involved rationalize the shocking experiences).
Almost all the responders, relatives and survivors who experienced mental problems ultimately managed to overcome them with help from counselors.
In the time when the accident happened, station controllers were not required to alert train drivers by phone in case of unusual crossings and charter trains, although it was a common practice anyway. The conditions for this accident unfortunately occurred soon after a shift change, so the customary phone call was forgotten.
De Biase was a very experienced train driver, who had been working for many years on the line. Most likely, according to the inquiry, he ignored the red signals since he had not received an advisory phone call. While fog may have been a factor, it was downplayed in the final inquiry response. Early hypotheses of his being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or being talking on his cellphone, were dismissed after checks.
The official inquiry, led by Bologna's public prosecutor Andrea Scarpa, charged 10 people, including Trenitalia
CEO Mauro Moretti
and the Head of the infrastructure division of RFI
Michele Mario Elia, of causing a rail disaster, involuntary homicide and involuntary wounding. They were all discharged on May 11, 2009.
Ultimately, the predominant blame was placed on De Biase, with minor remarks about the line's lack of extra safety measures. The inquiry result was disputed by train engineers associations and unions, who displayed 17 cardboard coffins in front of the courthouse.
The Bologna-Verona railway, linking two major cities, is 114 kilometers long, but some two-thirds of it (72 kilometers) were single rail. An upgrade to a two-rail line was to be completed by 2008, along with installation of SCMT
(a device self-limiting train speed if needed) and SSC
centralized control systems. Any of these upgrades could have avoided the disaster. Trenitalia blamed the lack of upgrade on unexpected funding cuts and missed payments by Silvio Berlusconi
's government. A new special fund had been assigned on December 20, 2004, just 17 days before, to be paid off in the following years.
After the disaster, a security system installation was planned. Just 10 months later the new SCMT automatic control was installed, and cargo trains routes were changed in order to lighten the load on single rail stretches in favor of better equipped main lines. Line upgrade was deemed a priority and works were quickly initiated.
Railwaymen unions' requests for reduced speed limits in dense fog, new rules for train crossing and calls for a full scale deployment of automated traffic control systems on the whole Italian network went unheeded.
A 24-hour strike was held on January 16–17, 2005, in protest against the cuts to safety budget and the practice of blaming drivers and engineers in accidents where better equipment could have been a lifesaver. In the two years before the Crevalcore accident, five accidents including the Rometta Marea derailment
caused injuries that could have been avoided by better funding of safety measures.
A city park located near the Bolognina station was dedicated to the victims, named Parco 7 gennaio 2005.
Train wreck
A train wreck or train crash is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track; or an accident, such as when a train wheel jumps off a track in a derailment; or when a boiler...
which occurred on 7 January 2005 on the Verona–Bologna railway
Verona–Bologna railway
The Verona–Bologna railway is a major Italian railway connecting Verona and Bologna and part of the major axis from the Brenner railway to the Bologna–Florence and on to Rome. The line is part of the Line 1 of Trans-European Transport Networks...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, killing 17. It was one of the worst accidents in the recent history of the state railway company Ferrovie dello Stato
Ferrovie dello Stato
Ferrovie dello Stato is a government-owned holding which manage infrastructure and service on the Italian rail network. The subsidiary Trenitalia is the main rail operator in Italy.-Organization:Ferrovie dello Stato subsidiaries are:...
. In the accident, a cargo and a passenger train collided in dense fog after the passenger train's driver passed two red signals
Signal passed at danger
A Signal passed at danger , in British railway terminology, occurs when a train passes a stop signal without authority to do so. It is a term primarily used within the British Railway Industry, although it can be applied worldwide.-Categories of SPAD:...
, possibly as a result of an unwarranted assumption by the driver that the line was clear, despite the warning signals.
Accident
Cargo train n.59308, engine FS Class E652.100, left RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in the morning of 7 January, headed to San Zeno Falzano with a full load of girder
Girder
A girder is a support beam used in construction. Girders often have an I-beam cross section for strength, but may also have a box shape, Z shape or other forms. Girder is the term used to denote the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams...
s. At the time of the accident, it was traveling at a speed estimated below 30 km/h on a single-rail stretch in the Verona-Bologna line near the abandoned station of Bolognina di Ronchi di Crevalcore
Crevalcore
Crevalcore is a town and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region near Bologna, Italy.-External links:*...
.
The area was covered by a dense fog, a common condition especially in winter in the Po valley
Po Valley
The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain is a major geographical feature of Italy. It extends approximately in an east-west direction, with an area of 46,000 km² including its Venetic extension not actually related to the Po River basin; it runs from the Western Alps to the...
. Visibility was estimated at 50 meters or less.
At 12.50 a.m. Intercity 2225, a commuter passenger train, having left Verona at 11.39 and heading to Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, collided head-on at high speed with the slow moving cargo train, breaking up on impact. The passenger cars were lifted by inertia
Inertia
Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to...
and piled up on top of each other. Some of them suffered extensive damage even though they were of a common steel-framed design which has proven itself safe since the early 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
.
The passenger train engine left the rails, leaving the first car fully exposed to the cargo train locomotive. The second car came to rest in an almost vertical condition.
First rescue
Two hundred rescuers were dispatched to the disaster. The fog, low visibility, and muddy soil impaired rescue efforts. Throughout the rescue operation, ambulanceAmbulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...
s had to be towed by tractor
Tractor
A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
s provided by local farmers.
Early assessments led to estimate 13 deaths - including the four drivers of the trains - and over 60 injured. Five passengers had to be hospitalized in critical conditions. A toll-free number for relatives to receive information on victims and wounded was established. Fifty people escaped the crash unscathed and were brought to Crevalcore
Crevalcore
Crevalcore is a town and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region near Bologna, Italy.-External links:*...
by a bus provided by the comune
Comune
In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...
. They later reached their destination by another train.
Local supermarket
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...
s set up a canteen service for the hundreds of rescuers and provided first necessities for survivors.
In the end, 17 were killed and more than 65 injured. Among the victims were all four train conductors (Vincenzo De Biase and Paolo Cinti from the Intercity, Equizio Abate and Ciro Cuccinello from the cargo).
The cargo engine had to be demolished in place, along with some of the cars.
Psychological issues
The eeriness of the disaster scene, along with the severity of the accident, led to psychological distress among both the survivors and the responders. Psychologists were sent to the crash site in order to cope with shocked passengers and firemen. The response to the Crevalcore accident was later used as a case study by Bologna University of Psychology.Survivors' reactions were mixed: some of them displayed disbelief about the happening, while many were shocked into silence. Some exhibited irrational behaviors, such as crying for a miracle, or thanking the Virgin Mary while running in circles.
Feeling of powerlessness on the part of survivors who tried to help the injured was a major cause of post-traumatic disorders. Some survivors experienced so-called "survivor's guilt", believing that they could have given more help.
Fog framed a horrific panorama for the firemen and medical personnel reaching the scene. The ghostly wreck - much bigger than expected - emerged from the fog "like a movie scene" (as stated by a rescuer questioned by University psychologists), just four to five meters away from the torn carriages.
Rescuers who concentrated intently on their tasks were found to have coped better with the psychological pressure. Some firemen kept working well beyond usual limits, trying to overcome their feelings with excessive work. Less experienced or less well trained rescuers experienced confusion and trauma when confronted with the unexpected enormity of the tragedy; this led to logistic problems, slowing the response.
Hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s were documented among some responders (for example, a severed human head was seen above the piled up coaches), inducing some cases of mass hysteria. Cries from the injured people were deemed a main cause of psychological breakdowns among the rescuers.
After the Crevalcore accident, new procedures of stress management and psychological counseling were developed to help responders better cope with the consequences arising from this sort of incident, moving from self-managed stress control (such as, for example, relying on the need to keep a "tough guy" stance in front of fellow responders) to a group-based approach (one such approach involves conducting "ceremonies" to help those involved rationalize the shocking experiences).
Almost all the responders, relatives and survivors who experienced mental problems ultimately managed to overcome them with help from counselors.
Related suicide
Train driver Alberto Guerro, a close friend of the cargo train's drivers, hung himself five days after the disaster. He had already been suffering from post-traumatic depression after being involved in the Lavino di Mezzo (Bologna) derailment more than eight months before, and his friends' tragic endings are thought to have been a factor in his suicide. He is sometime dubbed Crevalcore's 18th victim.Inquiry
Five years after the disaster, the inquiry established that Vincenzo De Biase, engineer of the passenger train, missed two red signals entering a rail block occupied by the cargo train.In the time when the accident happened, station controllers were not required to alert train drivers by phone in case of unusual crossings and charter trains, although it was a common practice anyway. The conditions for this accident unfortunately occurred soon after a shift change, so the customary phone call was forgotten.
De Biase was a very experienced train driver, who had been working for many years on the line. Most likely, according to the inquiry, he ignored the red signals since he had not received an advisory phone call. While fog may have been a factor, it was downplayed in the final inquiry response. Early hypotheses of his being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or being talking on his cellphone, were dismissed after checks.
The official inquiry, led by Bologna's public prosecutor Andrea Scarpa, charged 10 people, including Trenitalia
Trenitalia
Trenitalia is the primary train operator in Italy. Trenitalia is owned by Ferrovie dello Stato, itself owned by the Italian Government. It was created in 2000 following the EU directive on the deregulation of rail transport.-Passenger transport:...
CEO Mauro Moretti
Mauro Moretti
Mauro Moretti is an Italian executive and current CEO of Ferrovie dello Stato S.p.A, chairman of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies and vice chairman of the Union internationale des chemins de fer....
and the Head of the infrastructure division of RFI
Rete Ferroviaria Italiana
Rete Ferroviaria Italiana is an Italian company fully owned by Ferrovie dello Stato . RFI is the owner of Italy's railway network, it sets train paths, provides signalling, provides maintenance and other services for the railway network...
Michele Mario Elia, of causing a rail disaster, involuntary homicide and involuntary wounding. They were all discharged on May 11, 2009.
Ultimately, the predominant blame was placed on De Biase, with minor remarks about the line's lack of extra safety measures. The inquiry result was disputed by train engineers associations and unions, who displayed 17 cardboard coffins in front of the courthouse.
Aftermath
The crash location was one of many single-rail stretches of country's secondary railways. As many others, it was not equipped with automatic speed control and had only basic block control signaling. The nearest station, Bolognina di Crevalcore, was unmanned and the switch controls were remote controlled.The Bologna-Verona railway, linking two major cities, is 114 kilometers long, but some two-thirds of it (72 kilometers) were single rail. An upgrade to a two-rail line was to be completed by 2008, along with installation of SCMT
Sistema Controllo Marcia Treno
Sistema di Controllo della Marcia del Treno is a discontinuous train Cab signalling system used in Italy. It shares many features with the Ripetizione Segnali system, the two systems co-existing and working together...
(a device self-limiting train speed if needed) and SSC
Sistema Supporto Condotta
The Sistema Supporto Condotta , or SSC is a railway safety system used by Italian railway operator Ferrovie dello Stato. Its function is to provide a comprehensive set of visual helps to the driver, about block signaling, speed limits and temporary limitations...
centralized control systems. Any of these upgrades could have avoided the disaster. Trenitalia blamed the lack of upgrade on unexpected funding cuts and missed payments by Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi , also known as Il Cavaliere – from knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour which he received in 1977 – is an Italian politician and businessman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the...
's government. A new special fund had been assigned on December 20, 2004, just 17 days before, to be paid off in the following years.
After the disaster, a security system installation was planned. Just 10 months later the new SCMT automatic control was installed, and cargo trains routes were changed in order to lighten the load on single rail stretches in favor of better equipped main lines. Line upgrade was deemed a priority and works were quickly initiated.
Railwaymen unions' requests for reduced speed limits in dense fog, new rules for train crossing and calls for a full scale deployment of automated traffic control systems on the whole Italian network went unheeded.
A 24-hour strike was held on January 16–17, 2005, in protest against the cuts to safety budget and the practice of blaming drivers and engineers in accidents where better equipment could have been a lifesaver. In the two years before the Crevalcore accident, five accidents including the Rometta Marea derailment
Rometta Marea derailment
The Rometta Marea derailment occurred on Saturday July 20, 2002, in Rometta Marea, part of the Rometta comune in Sicily, Italy.The Espresso 1932 Freccia della Laguna, a Ferrovie dello Stato train coming from Palermo to Messina, where it would join another convoy coming from Siracusa, derailed...
caused injuries that could have been avoided by better funding of safety measures.
A city park located near the Bolognina station was dedicated to the victims, named Parco 7 gennaio 2005.