The Great Baku Metro Fire of 1995 | Episode 87 - Doomsday: History's Most Dangerous Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
We all complained about our commutes. We all think we
have a pretty bad But unless your commute includes choking
to death on toxic fumes, for being claustrophobically trampled in
the dark while on fire, well prepared to eat your feelings. Hello,

(00:38):
and welcome to Doomsday Histories Most Dangerous Podcast. Together we're
going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and
uninspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout
human history and around the world. On today's episode, we'll
learn what makes the world capital of mud Fart so fascinating.

(01:01):
We'll discover why Soviet utilities designed for utilitary and benefit
of masses are so flammable. And I'll make you understand
the analogy that you don't survive a skydive accident just
to get eaten by alligators. And if you were listening
to this on Patreon, you would hear about the marketing
plan that included a media budget for murdering an elephant.

(01:23):
We would answer the question what's the most aggressively violent
disaster your hometown completely forgot. You would learn why transit
authority could have for removal kits include a kind of
an industrial spatula, and you would learn why trauma professionals
call today's kind of injury the barbecue effect. This is
not the show you play around kids, or while eating,

(01:44):
or even in mixed company. But as long as you
find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something
that could potentially save your life, our work is done.
So with all that said, sure the kids out of
the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and
let's pig in. I know I'm never really going to

(02:08):
be able to see the world the way that I
might have liked before I die, So this show has
become a bit of a bloody circuit for my fading dreams,
which is why it is such a pleasure to visit
some new and interesting part of the world for the
first time. We've been to some fairly unique and dramatic
landscapes on this show before, but nothing quite like Azerbaijan.

(02:31):
You're all all right, tell us about the beaches and
the shopping, but right off the top, those are the
least interesting things about Azerbaijan. You know how people say
they're great ideas to open a restaurant or a fueling
station right on the side of a highway. Well, a
few thousand years ago, when China kicked the doors open
on international trade, the highway for that trade, for the

(02:54):
lack of a better analogy, ran through Azerbaijan. They called
it the Silk Road, and it made them a bit
of an international hotspot. And because of this, it's literally
one of the most strategically, historically and culturally interesting places
on the world map. Azerbaijan sits at the crossroads of Europe,
Central Asia, the Middle East, and Russia. And it's not

(03:17):
even that big. It's roughly about the same size as
South Carolina. That helps. It's smaller than Portugal. But you
know what they say about sex and real estate, location
is more important than size. And so they had a
kind of a lot of visitors and a fluke of
geography lined their pockets quite nicely for over fifteen hundred years.

(03:38):
I mean, how lucky could a country get? Well, Okay,
let's see fast forward to eighteen forty six and at
the adorably named bb Haybat outside of the capital city
of Baku, Azerbaijean became the first place in the world
where oil was extracted and refined on an industrial scale,

(03:59):
as the US or Saudi Arabia got in on the action,
and by the early nineteen hundreds they were producing more
than half of the oil in the world. So, yeah,
sometimes lightning does strike twice, you know, kind of three
times a bit. It's not just an abundance of natural oil.
They also have massive natural gas reserves. Okay, well so

(04:21):
does Canada. But but what we don't have are random
flaming geysers and fountains of flames that have burned across
our country for centuries. And that is why they call
Azerbaijan the Land of Fire. People from around the world
have pilgrimaged here to witness and pray to sacred burning
hillsides and fens of ancient and mystical flame forever. Not

(04:44):
far from Baku sits the Zoroastrian fire Temple of a Teeshka.
It's this sprawling religious castle temple that protects an eternal
sacred flame at it's part. It's this ancient religion that
comes out of Persia. They basically believe in good and evil,
and they believe in a single god, which was rare
when you go back in time. And if you've ever

(05:05):
heard that Zoroastrians worship fire, well kinda, but that's not
entirely it. They don't worship fire. They just kind of
pray to it as being symbolic of the Ahura Mazda,
which was the ancient supreme Persian god we talked about,
and that love of flame would become really on brand
for their country. Jan Our Dog is this kind of
mountain or hillside that has been burning for hundreds of years,

(05:28):
and Instagrammers love to photograph themselves standing in front of
it with outstretched arms, captioning their picks with phrases like
where the Earth breathes fire hashtag so hot. So what
else they got? Well? It's also the mud volcano capital
of the world. I can't remember where we last ran
into those, but yeah, they remain Earth's muddy fart holes.

(05:52):
Mud volcanoes are kind of like anal geological vents that
fart dirt and water gas, usually methane, which I guess
is better than lava either way. Azerbaijan has over four
hundred of them. That's more than any other country in
the world, and just for fun, some of them double
duty burp farting fire because they pair up with the

(06:13):
gas reserves. This country offers so many interesting things that
humans have been visiting here, reportedly for three hundred and
fifty thousand years. In fact, one of the world's oldest
prehistoric human settlements was found here in the oddly vaginal
AzaC Cave. You know bones, fire pits, and tools, And

(06:34):
just four hours away by car you'll find the Gobistan
National Park, which features over six thousand rock engravings dating
back as far as forty thousand years. Prehistoric stick people,
stabbing animals, rituals, hunting scenes, you know, all the classics.
Azerbaijan is home to one of the earliest traces of
human habitation anywhere, even their ancient music. It's called Mugum.

(06:57):
The only review of it i read was from UNESCO,
who called it part of the quote intangible heritage of humanity.
Azerbaijan's blend of history and crazy natural phenomenon and cultural
richness makes it an utterly visitable country. This part of
the world has been part of the Persian Empire. It's
been invaded by everybody from Alexander the Great to Turkic

(07:20):
tribes and Mongols came by, and even Bolshevik Russians. In fact,
it found itself involuntarily sucked into the Soviet Union. All
that history, all that heritage has left it with a
real blend of Zoroastrian and Persian and Islamic and Christian
and even Soviet influences. And maybe we'll get to check

(07:42):
out some of that today. And another thing that makes
them unique, well, religious tolerance is their bag. Today. Azerbaijan
stands out as the only Muslim majority country in the
world that maintains a secular government. It just means that
you've got synagogues and mosques and Christian Church is all
just coexisting for a deeply religious place. It's pretty progressive.

(08:05):
Azerbaijani women even had the right to vote before the
US or the UK. They are an unusually accommodating country
in a part of the world that people don't really
think of as accommodating. I mean yes, warmth and hospitality
are deeply rooted in the culture of the region and
outside of the cities, seeing a foreigner like us can

(08:25):
be the kind of novelty that gets you a dinner invitation.
But today we're going to be spending our time in
the capital city of back who the lowest lying capital
city in the world. See Azerbaijan sits on the shores
of the Caspian Sea, but the capital sits ninety two
feet below sea level. That bathtub overflows and back who

(08:48):
is sitting under nine stories of water. I should also
say that Caspian Sea it's not actually connected to the
world's oceans, so technically it is the world's largest saltwater lake.
Don't know how helpful this is as far as situating
it in your head, but Azerbaijan is tucked in and
kind of squeezed like a nipple pointing across the Caspian

(09:09):
at Turkmenistan and surrounded by Iran and Armenia, Georgia and Russia. Obviously,
finding itself situated halfway between Europe and China has definitely
been good for it. And today it's as modern as hell,
like oil money modern. When you see crebaceous architecture shaped
like flames, yeah, you know they've got the kind of

(09:31):
money to brand themselves from the bottom up. Baku stands
out as one of the most developed cities in the
entire region. Luxury hotels, shopping malls, office towers, by all
of it. I mean they run f one Grand Prix
races here. For crying out loud, that means you also
expect infrastructure like railroads and harbors and international airports, and

(09:53):
a fairly robust subway or metro system, which is exactly
what brings us here today. Baku's metro system is very
efficient and clean, and the trains run often and are
actually very inexpensive. I don't know what the nearest subway
to Yukos, but this one's about thirty cents, and the
entire system is bilingual in English, so no worries there, huzzah.

(10:18):
The Baku Metro has come a long way since it opened.
Back in nineteen sixty seven. After World War II, Baku's
population passed the one million mark, which by Soviet law,
meant the people needed to be served by a metro system.
Soviet cabinet ministers slapped their shoes on their desks and
to create it to be back in nineteen forty seven,

(10:39):
and the first shovels at the ground in nineteen fifty one.
If you'll remember from our previous Soviet inspired episodes, the
government had a massive boner to match deadlines with important
Soviet anniversaries, and the Baku Metro was finished and opened
on the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. If you
don't remember, the October Revolution happened back in nineteen seventeen

(11:03):
when Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government,
and it was all hammers and sickles after that. In fact,
Bolshevitz were the same guys who invaded Azerbaijan and sucked
them into the USSR. We visited a metro station in
Moscow once before, during our Aviamodornaya Escalator Disaster of nineteen
eighty two episode. It was one of those infamous Soviet

(11:25):
stations that they built so deep underground that it specifically
doubled as a bomb shelter against nukes during the Cold War.
The Baku system covers the whole city twenty seven stations
spread across three different lines. When it opened, it was
more like twelve stations across a single line, But it
was all expansion in rainbows after that until the Soviet

(11:48):
Union collapsed at the end of nineteen ninety one. Stepping
into a Baku metro station still feels like entering a
grand Soviet palace. The walls are lined with polished marble
and deck raed with ornate chandeliers and mosaic murals. Celebrating
workers and industry and just the whole Soviet vibe. But
we're not here for the stations, Nah, We're here for

(12:10):
the trains. Do you ever hear of Metro Wagon Mash
brand metro cars? Well, Metro Wagon Mash, which we're just
going to shorten to MVM, is one of the oldest
industrial manufacturers in Russia. The name itself is just a
portmanteau of different Russian words all cut up that roughly
translates to metro car machine building plant. They started building

(12:32):
freight wagons back in eighteen ninety seven, but they moved
onto rail and metro cars after they were abducted into
the ministry of heavy machine building. And what they made
weren't exactly pullman cars, if you know what I mean.
They had faux wood paneling and beij walls and linoleum flooring,
and you would sit across parallel rows of hard plastic

(12:54):
benches padded with you know, that kind of burgundy vinyl
that cracks overtime, and all of it illuminated by fluorescent
tube lighting that cast everything in a cold and bluish glow.
But their job was to make them efficient, nah comfy,
So they started building and rolling them out to metros
across the Soviet Union. An MVM metro car measures about

(13:16):
sixty feet long, they'll sit almost fifty and on a
bad day, almost three hundred more could stand, which is
a lot of people to cram into something shorter than
four Dodge caravans, which also goes to make my ongoing
point about trains being more efficient than passenger vehicles, and
I've heard people describe them as having a kind of
a brutal charm. Like all good Soviet manufacturing and design,

(13:39):
the metro cars were designed for utilitarian benefit of masses,
so they chose capacity and durability and function over any
kind of comfort, which makes a contrast between these lavish
stations and the metro cars striking. The people of the
old Soviet Union would call this kind of a thing
grandeur masking hardship. But we're not here to complain about

(14:01):
austerity subways. We're here to catch a train. And our
story takes place October the twenty eighth, nineteen ninety five.
One of the main reasons to travel is to get
a feel for everyday life in a new place. So
let's start our day like a local by seeing how
locals actually get around. Taking the Metro is a way

(14:24):
to bathe in the culture and history of the place.
We're going to start our exploration at the Alda station.
Aldas is a mostly residential neighborhood in the northeastern part
of Baku. The Oldo station sits on the red line
of the Metro and it opened back in nineteen seventy
and the trains might not win a lot of beauty contests,

(14:45):
but the station, like many other former Soviet systems, most
of the stations were exquisitely decorated. The design emphasizes spaciousness
and elegance. Try to picture a long, spacious hall lined
with with two rows of geographic columns and top by
saw light stripes with light bulbs arranged in a chessboard pattern.

(15:07):
The flooring merges black and green granite with white marble,
recreating Azerbaijani carpet designs. The train will be catching today
runs about one and a half miles or two and
a half kilometers between old Dose station and Narrimanov Station
in the west end, and we will be catching the
five fifty eight pm train. It's right in the middle

(15:27):
of rush hour, so we'll be squeezing in with just
over a thousand other passengers. Don't worry, we'll find room.
The doors close with a whoosh, and as we pull
out of the station, we hear the traction motors rise
into a familiar, high pitched electric wine. You might picture
a Soviet era subway or metro and think the thing
would run on diesel at belch exhaust out of the

(15:49):
back like a bus, but no Diesel trains would have
required extensive and extremely heavy ventilation systems to suck out
all the toxic fumes and the soot and everything else where.
Electric trains produce zero exhaust. And it's not just that
you wouldn't think of it from a usage point of view,
but you ever notice how much smoother and nicer an

(16:10):
electric train ride can be compared to a bus. It's
because electric motors provide instant torque. Do what well, if
you know it by name but don't know what it
actually does. Torque is the force that it takes to
make something rotate, you know, like when you turn a
doorknob or a steering wheel. It just means, unlike gas engines,
electric engines will accelerate up to sixty miles or ninety

(16:31):
kilometers an hour very quickly, and then slow down very efficiently,
and we left in a bit of a hurry, so
we didn't get to see what the people on the
platform saw. I don't want to spoil anything by calling
them witnesses, but witnesses saw a flash near the rear
of the train just as soon as we left the
station and entered the tunnel. I don't know what it was,

(16:53):
but whatever it was, it happened fast, and within only seconds,
passengers near the rear of the train started to smell smoke,
and almost as quickly they could see it. White smoke
was entering the train, but as quick as it appeared,
it almost immediately turned black. And this is one of
the things that firefighters watch out for. White smoke usually

(17:15):
means steam or you're burning stuff like wood or paper,
but once it turns black, that's usually a sign that
synthetic materials like plastics or rubber or chemicals are involved.
Our trip, in total, has taken less time than it
has taken me to say this, and in this short
of a time, Car four erupted into visible flames. More

(17:37):
and more smoke was filling the air outside the train,
and within seconds it blocked all the bulbs in the ceiling,
plunging the entire tunnel into darkness. And it does not
take long for a light panic to erupt, which is
not helped as your metrocar is illuminated by the strobe
like effect of the electrical system failing all around you.

(17:58):
And at this point to a stop. And we've only
traveled about six hundred and fifty feet or two hundred
meters into the tunnel, think a street parking for about
forty Dodge caravans, and we stopped because the train systems
were failing. The driver, Vadjif Grubinov, noticed the smoke, jumped
out and rushed to find one of the tunnel emergency

(18:18):
telephones to contact the traffic information center. What he told
them was that for reasons, the train was on fire
and they needed to evacuate, and he demanded that they
shut off the power to the tunnel. From there, he
just dropped the receiver and let the phone dangle all
dramatic like while he assisted the evacuation by opening the
doors at the front of the train, making it easier

(18:40):
for passengers to escape. It was a five car train
and the people on board did not need to be
told to leave, and in less time than it should
have taken for them to finish their trip all the
way to Narmount of Station. Fire had clearly begun to
consume Car four. The more the fire burned, the more
smoke was generated, and it was a toxic, oozing smoke

(19:00):
cobbled together out of flammable synthetic materials like the seating
and the interior paneling. We've talked about this kind of
thing before. If you are looking for anything more dangerous
to breathe than burning synthetics, you are probably going to
need to visit Jupiter. The train was made up of
five cars. Like I said, Cars four and five were
by now very much on fire, and when people in

(19:22):
our car tried to evacuate, they were greeted with malfunctioning
doors that were jammed shut. I always say there's nothing
panic loves more than surprise. That is to say, the
way a broken escalator becomes stairs, a broken door becomes
a wall. And this is a busy train in complete darkness.
You can picture people clawing at each other, trying to

(19:44):
escape or orient themselves in the heart of madness. It
wasn't long before they started bashing out the windows. Of course,
every new opening was a new way for smoke to
enter the car and make things even worse. In the chaos,
people were being crushed and trampled. It's hard to imagine
the sensation of panic, your heart pounding through your shirt

(20:06):
and gulping down air, only to realize you're gulping things
that really don't count as air. You've got one hundred
thousand years of genetic programming screaming at you to do
whatever it takes to get away from the danger. But
you are being poisoned, and your limbs are becoming weaker
by the second, followed by your thinking, followed by your lifespan,

(20:29):
and when you get to heaven or wherever it is
you're heading. And they asked, so, how did you like Azerbaijan,
You'll say the last thing you remember were the shoe
and bootprints of a thousand screaming people, either hoofing you
in the ribs and skull and generally flattening out your
ribs and bones because they couldn't see you. For reference,

(20:49):
if someone is light as one hundred and thirty or
one hundred and fifty pounds ran over you, they could
absolutely break your ribs. The result of all of this
was obviously people being crushed or trampled. And how many
of those people would stop to make sure that you
were okay, or try to drag you to safety, or
even just prop you up to save you from being trampled. Well,

(21:09):
the answer would be none, zero people, And don't judge.
I want to remind you you're in a confined space
with benches and tripping hazards everywhere. You're in complete darkness.
People are screaming over the sounds of flames erupting all
around you, and the air is hot and choking and toxic,

(21:30):
so you cannot expect anyone to help you. But when
I did say zero people, well that wasn't entirely true.
A man named sh singhiz Babeyev was an officer in
the army who also happened to be aboard the train.
At the time. He was young. He was only thirty,
but he was a senior lieutenant at a local military

(21:50):
academy with a reputation for being calm and disciplined. Honestly,
no two better qualities to hold in a situation like this,
Since premonition and freeze breath weren't on the table. Well,
there is no scarier meat grinder of a litmus test
for that calm. When disaiented passengers started to lose it
in the dark, instead of booking at double time back

(22:12):
to the station and doing jumping jacks till the media
arrived to interview him, he helped evacuate the train and
guided people to safety. He took charge, keeping people calm
and organizing as orderly an evacuation as possible for those
near him. In fact, he kept coming back to the
train to help others again and again, sometimes physically carrying

(22:33):
people who couldn't walk on their own. One reporter said,
after saving everyone in his car, he then entered the
next car to continue helping. We'll never know exactly how
many people he saved because it was pitch black. Many
survivors have no idea how they got out of the tunnel,
and even if this had all gone down at a
light bulb festival. Trauma can cause dissociative amnesia basically happens,

(22:58):
but the brain becomes so overwhelm by the stress and
the fear from it it blocks those memories as a
defense mechanism. All we know for sure is that he
saved dozens of lives until all that exposure to the
heat and the smoke left him too weak to continue
singhas Babayev was found among the dead in the tunnel.

(23:18):
Smoke and fire quickly made the escape down the tunnel
back to Uldu station difficult, if not impossible, especially for
those in the forward three cars. They were not going
to be shimmying past laming train cars, so most passengers
had to try their luck by hoofing it two kilometers
or one point two miles towards the next station at Naramanov.

(23:39):
The thing about escaping through Uldez was also the fact
that the best route to safety was the exact same
route that most of the smoke followed. For those in
the tunnel, still, it was impossibly difficult. And I'll tell
you why metro tunnels are meant for trains, not people.
I will do my best not to standardize this as

(24:00):
any kind of unit of measurement in the future, but
the amount of wiggle room available to those in the
tunnel was comparable to the size of a child's coffin.
They also lack handrails or walkways, unless you are in
a tunnel designed with a dedicated emergency path which I
have to tell you we are not. There's a trench
that runs between the rails that makes it kind of

(24:21):
difficult to walk. It's filled with this mixture of uneven
concrete and gravel, and there's metal ties there to twist
your ankle or trip you up. And most passengers found
themselves kind of grasping cables along the cold, clammy, dirty,
filthy wall to support and guide them, and the whole
thing felt eerie and hostile. You move cautiously, feeling your

(24:42):
way along, but every fiber of your being is screaming
at you to run back on the train. Yes, people
clawd and pod at each other in the dark, desperate
to flee the flames and the suffocating smoke. But as
it turns out, there was something just as dangerous in
the tunnel with us that no one could see, humming
away silently inches from their feet and carrying enough electricity

(25:07):
to stop a heart cold. You ever hear of the
third rail? Well, electric trains run on two rails, but
there is a third rail, and its whole purpose is
to carry high voltage electricity to make it run. And
it's not loud, it doesn't glow, and it doesn't spark.
You can't hear it vibrating, and sometimes it gets covered
by a little bit of a metal shroud and it

(25:28):
runs along the side of the track. But either way,
even if you saw it, you'd just think it was
some unassuming piece of the infrastructure, just some dull metal
bar that carries eight hundred and twenty five volts of
direct current. For reference, eight hundred and twenty five volts
is more than three times more powerful than the strongest,
most energy inefficient appliance in your house. And touch it

(25:50):
the wrong way, and that's that. You won't scream, You
won't actually react at all. All you'll feel is a
violent jolt go through your body that locks up and
seizes all of your muscles, including your heart, which I'm
afraid is silently and wordlessly coming to a stop. So
you got conned into visiting a foreign country by a

(26:13):
podcast that promised everything would be on fire, but instead
you find yourself stuck in a subway tunnel in the dark,
playing keep away with a hidden power line. Would you
know what to do if you came into contact with
the third rail, even for a fraction of a second,
you are facing immediate unconsciousness respiratory paralysis and a cardiac arrest.

(26:38):
Electricity does a great job of knocking the needle off
the record for you. It's called ventricular fibrillation. Basically, the
heart stops pumping blood, which leads to a sudden drop
in blood pressure, which brings on unconsciousness and yeah, then death.
And you get a strong enough jolt, and your heart's
ventricles will quiver twitch erratically instead of actually pumping blood.

(27:00):
Sudden collapse, no pulse, no breathing. An electrical current basically
disrupts the nervous system, making a game of broken telephone
between your brain and your vital organs. And of course
it can also cause severe muscle contractions like I said,
which would make you uncontrollably hug the thing that is
killing you. And wherever you touch any point of contact,

(27:23):
it usually sustains deep electrical burns that can destroy muscle
and nerves and even bone along the path of where
the electricity flows. All that, plus your skin can carbonize
from the heat, meaning literally burning and breaking down the
proteins and tissues like overcooked meat till all you have
left is charred, crispy carbon. Well, that and brain damage

(27:45):
from all the knot breathing, and organ failure from all
of the internal burns. Bottom line for long contact with
the third rail is usually instantly fatal. But let's say
you just grazed it. Let's say you took a hit,
but no one came to waving to a tunnel of
white light about it. Let's see what we can do
to give you your best chance of recovery. First things, first,

(28:08):
stop touching stuff. If someone's already been electrocuted and they're
not in contact with the thing that was electrocuting them,
their body cannot store electrical current, so you can feel
free to touch them safely. If they're still draped over
a third rail. In this case, use a wooden broom
or anything non conductive you can find to pry them free.

(28:29):
I know one story where someone wrapped their T shirt
around someone's neck and lifted them off a power line.
But let's assume the person we're talking about has not
burned to a crisp by now. Are they conscious? Electrical
injuries don't always show right away. They could fall over
from delayed cardiac arrhythmia or internal bleeding after the fact,
So first thing first, get them to lay flat and

(28:49):
calm them if possible, and get someone to call nine
one one. But what if they were breathing but unconscious, Well,
you ever hear of the recovery position. What you do
is you gently roll them onto your side. You gently
roll them onto their side facing you, and tilt their
head back slightly, and this keeps their airway open, and
then you sort of prop them up by bending their
top leg and resting it over the bottom leg to

(29:10):
stabilize them and keep them warm with a jacket or
a blanket or whatever you can find. But if they're
not breathing, you want to begin CPR immediately and have
someone go and find a defibrillator. We haven't covered CPR
in a while, so no better time than now to review.
No breathing meets no heartbeat, So what you're going to
want to do is place your hands in the center
of their chest and put push on repeat and keep

(29:31):
a steady tempo. They always say to keep it to
the beat of staying alive by the begis. But just
google a list of songs between one hundred and one
hundred and twenty beats per minute and just pick your favorite.
Pick something that you'll know you'll remember under stress. Some
will be happy to learn that Kelly Clarkson's What Doesn't
Kill You Makes You Stronger works perfectly. So how about
that hand position. What you do is you place the

(29:53):
heel of one of your hands basically between the nipples
on the lower half of the breastbone, put your other
hand on top and interlock your finger and then just pump.
That is literally what you are doing. You are pumping
for the heart. And here's a tip you won't always here.
Lock your elbows and keep your arms straight like you
got to kind of prop yourself upwards, but you get
to use your body weight to push down instead of

(30:13):
your arms, which will save you a lot of energy,
because this is not the kind of job that you
want to wear out while doing. And speaking of breathless,
if they're not breathing, what you're going to do or
called rescue breaths. You tilt the head back and lift
the chin. That opens up the airway. You're all ready
to go. Just pinch the nose so you're not blowing
into their sinuses and give them two quick breaths about

(30:35):
one second long. And if you're going to do it,
you want to do it right, So watch to make
sure that it's working. If you can see their chest rising,
if it's not, kind of reposition their neck a bit,
get that airway open, keep going, and if they don't
sit up and say thank you, then that's what you're
gonna do. Continue the compressions. Do thirty compressions followed by
two breaths, and then back to another thirty compressions, and

(30:56):
you don't stop until help arrives, or the person wakes up,
or a family legal representative presents you with a do
not resuscitate order. You've got two types of current. This
is DC, or direct current. It's arguably more dangerous than
alternating current, which would also cause massive muscle contraction. But
AC is alternating current. So you know, when you see

(31:19):
someone touch something electrical and they cartoonishly fly across a room,
that's AC. So since you're not melting into a wire,
it's technically safer. When people in the tunnel under Baku
coming to contact with the third rail didn't warn people
around them, it was because they couldn't and the people
around them, let's call them the still alive, had no

(31:42):
idea that they were navigating around a loaded weapon. And
here's where I make the point that you do not
survive a plane crash only to get eaten by alligators,
and you do not survive a subway fire just to
get electrocuted. The third rail is always armed and simply
doesn't care if it kills you. And all of this

(32:02):
could have been prevented if the power had been turned off,
but clearly that didn't happen. In fact, it took more
than fifteen minutes for them to finally turn it off.
Same for reversing the ventilation, you know, to evacuate the smoke.
And I said, how those who stumbled backwards towards Ouldu's
station shared the space with all that toxic soup, and
how the vast majority of people opted for the endless

(32:24):
slog in the dark to the next station. For those
first fifteen minutes, most of that smoke was being pushed
with them towards the next station, and it was a
lot of smoke. This was a huge problem. When emergency
services arrived, that smoke and all the electrical issues kept
them from even entering the tunnel. They found themselves stuck
helping those who made it to the surface, and worse,

(32:47):
they were only helping people at Uldou's as people began
to arrive at Naramanov station without tripping or choking or
electrocuting to death. They found themselves all like hello. No
one had been disp there, and it took hours for
the fire to run out of flammable material and for
the responders to finally make their way to the train.

(33:07):
By the time the last survivor made it out of
the tunnel, depending on which source you except, three hundred
and three people had not. Thirty seven passengers and three
responders were also found outside the train. Two hundred and
sixty three victims had been found inside. Over five hundred
people were hospitalized. Two hundred and seventy of those were

(33:28):
treated for severe injuries related to smoke inhalation or crush
injuries or electrocution, and most died from suffocation, which is
what you're hoping to hear, right. Well, I didn't get
a full list of the autopsies, and most did die
from the smoke, but a significant number of the dead
had been killed under the boot of their fellow traveler.

(33:50):
So what happened as soon as the shakwar off the
Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Transferred Tation
authorities Voltron into a state commission to investigate the causes
of the disaster and assigned blame where needed. The fire
began in the fourth car of a five car train,

(34:11):
and investigators traced the fire to an electrical box at
the back of Car four. They concluded the primary cause
had been a short circuit in the traction motor. This
did explain why the train stopped on its own, in
spite of the fact that the electrical system in the
tunnel was clearly working very, very well. This short circuit
caused an electric arc, which ignited flammable materials in the

(34:34):
undercarriage of the car. Electrical arcing is where electric current
jumps across a gap and it's loud and it looks
pretty cool. It reduces intense heat and light and yep,
even sparks. In this case, this most likely happened as
a result of damaged or degraded insulation around some high
voltage wiring. All that power jumped from one conductor to another,

(34:57):
or in this case, to the metal frame of the
train in itself, and this would have acted like a
plasma torch, and the temperature produced would have exceeded five
thousand degrees celsius or nine thousand fahrenheit. So, professor, could
that have started the fire? Well, first starts, I'm not
a professor, and secondly, for a reference, that temperature is

(35:17):
only a smitch cooler than the surface of the sun,
and continuous power from the third rail kept it alive
until it was finally shut off, which in this case
took a while. The effected cable ran under the car's floor,
and when the electrical arc started, it burned the hell
out of everything. It even burned through the asbestos in
the floor, and from there it ignited the trains undercarriage

(35:39):
and spread into the interior. It all happened incredibly fast,
and it turns out about eighty percent of the materials
inside the train were flammable. In an enclosed space like
a subway car or a tunnel, there's little ventilation, which
allows smoke and toxic gases to concentrate quickly, and most
materials were synthetic, which is a recipe for a highly

(36:01):
poisonous and unfortunate breathing experience. It's assumed that most of
those who suffocated passed out within seconds and were dead
within minutes, particularly from carbon monoxide exposure. Investigators also discovered
that surprise surprise, maintenance was an ongoing issue, not just lapses,
but they were using older Soviet era parts and they

(36:23):
never got upgraded or replaced. It turns out they were
just out of pocket on all of this, and following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, with all their money
now gone, and between all the political and rest at
home and the ongoing First Negorno Karabak War against the
Armenians next door, they were tapped. There'd actually been a
whole new generation of train released just a few years earlier,

(36:45):
with a way more flame resistant interior, but if they
weren't replacing deteriorated wiring, they were not ponying up for
new trains, and in transit systems all around the world,
this remains an ongoing problem, insufficient funding. It's kind of
like the insider motto for transit systems. Well that and
wet my beak. See, there had also been reports of

(37:07):
a little corruption, you know, maybe some of those line
items and the budget paid for a new pool or
a few cars, or who even knows. Will never know,
because along with the transit system, the press was also
government controlled and still running under some fairly restrictive Soviet standards.
You report what we want you to report, that kind
of thing. So what did they think of the emergency response? Well,

(37:31):
first off, there was a complete absence of fire protection
equipment on board the trains, no smoke detectors, no fire extinguishers, nothing.
The train had also stopped in a tunnel between stations
without lighting or ventilation, and passengers had no idea what
to do. No instructions were ever given, even the staff
they hadn't been trained for anything like this. And even worse,

(37:52):
much much worse, they left the power on which pulled
double duty electrocuting people while fleeing. I don't think you
could draw a better death trap. The tunnel rapidly filled
with toxic smoke, the emergency exit signs weren't visible, No
one was trained, no instructions were given. Doors on the
cars were jammed because of the electrical failure, which created

(38:12):
a bottleneck and a stampede, and all because people were
forced to try to escape by less traditional means. President
Haidar Alayev and Azerbaijani government ordered three days of official
mourning and flags flew at half massed throughout the country.
Investigators found gross negligence in safety practices, in maintenance and

(38:32):
the emergency preparedness. So it was time to lay some
criminal charges. Ah Baku Metro executives and engineers and electrical
systems inspectors and station supervisors were all arrested and charged
with negligence resulting in death, failure to maintain critical infrastructure,
and violations of fire safety regulations, and at least six

(38:56):
of these people were formally prosecuted, and in the end
the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan sentenced the driver fa Jeff
Guberanov to fifteen years in prison and the station traffic
controller to ten years for criminal negligence. I couldn't find
their name, but he took the blame for the poor
condition of the tunnel, the train and the slow emergency response.

(39:18):
And I should point out that at the time people
were pretty sure that these guys got scapegoaded. They were
the lowest ranked employees on the chain that took the heat.
Senior officials seemed to get through all of this just fine.
Even today, thirty years later, there are still claims that
the disaster was the result of a bomb or an
arson attack. It wasn't worth bringing it up, but Azerbaijan

(39:42):
faced all kinds of problems that you would call terrorism
from Armenian militant groups, you know, bombings, assassinations, sabotage, just
that kind of thing. There was a history of ethnic
violence and warfare between Armenians and the Azerbaijanis, which we
are not going to get into. Let's just say that
a complete lack of solid evidence did not stop President

(40:05):
Laev from making the claim that the whole disaster had
been the result of a terrorist plot. To a US official,
the disaster did lead to a safety audit of the
whole system. They even asked Russia and Turkey and different
parts of the European Union for their two cents to
help bring their system up to international standards like fire
detection and suppression systems and emergency lighting and communications and

(40:29):
ventilation in the tunnels. It was pretty obvious stuff, but
they were still trying to shake off the shackles of
Soviet rules, which absolutely prioritized efficiency above safety. If I
told you the government provided compensation to victims' families, you'd say,
of course, that is the right thing to do. If
I told you, whatever it was was criticized by the

(40:51):
public as not being nearly enough well if you've listened
to the show long enough, you'd probably just shake your head, because,
as we've astilised, there's nothing quite like governmental compensation settlements
to make people feel re victimized all over again. The
trains of the Metro were upgraded a few times over
the years and eventually retired in twenty twelve. And remember

(41:15):
Singez Babayev. He was awarded the title of National Hero
of Azerbaijan, which is the country's highest honor, for his
courage and self sacrifice in saving a significant number of lives,
and even today he is remembered as a proud national
symbol of selfless heroism, and a memorial plaque lives at

(41:37):
the Narriman of Metro station in his memory. This disaster
became a case study for other countries running similar transit systems,
who themselves now undertook their own safety audits. This was
not a disaster or a death toll that anybody was
looking to beat. The previous record was held by New
York City. Maybe you remember a little something that we

(42:00):
called the Malbourne Street disaster of nineteen eighteen episode where
a subway derailed, collided with concrete pillars, and killed ninety three. Well,
today we triple that number, creating a record for fatalities
that has stood for three decades. The fire itself is
still one of the worst to ever have occurred in

(42:22):
an underground metro anywhere death toll aside, the fire alone
is still one of the worst to have ever occurred
in an underground transit system, and the disaster became a
symbol of the decay of post Soviet urban infrastructure. The
Great Baku Metro Fire of nineteen ninety five remains not

(42:42):
only the deadliest disaster in Azerbaishan's civilian history, it is
still the deadliest subway disaster in world history. About this disaster,
a lot of people say there was a kind of
mercy that, although it was horrifying to every sense that

(43:04):
you have, the carbon monoxide would have knocked people out
before they experienced any real true horror from the flames.
And in sitting here and thinking about the things that
people say after disasters to reassure others, and that they
went on about the mercy of the carbon monoxide reminded
me very much of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in
nineteen eighty six. You might not have been alive to

(43:27):
have seen it, but seventy three seconds into their trip
into space, the Space Shuttle exploded, killing all seven crew
members aboard. At least that's what my mom said. I
watched it live, and my mom told me that, yes,
it was terrible, but that it could have been worse
because at least everyone would have been killed instantly. Vaporized
was the word that she used. They wouldn't have known

(43:48):
what had happened to them, and they wouldn't have spent
time in fear or pain. And it's an incredibly comforting
thought because she wanted to make it better for me.
Of course, what she didn't know was that the nose
cone had blown free from the rest of the Shuttle
in the explosion, and that many of the crew were
still conscious. They flew completely unable to change anything about

(44:09):
their flight path, and this went on for an impossible
to imagine two minutes and forty five seconds. They traveled
twelve miles or nineteen kilometers before finally making contact with
the ocean at over two hundred miles or three hundred
and twenty kilometers an hour, and there's plenty of evidence
that they were slapping every button they could, which means yes,

(44:30):
they did live in fear, but they would have lost
consciousness from the altitude at some point and been spared
the knowledge of what came next. And these are the
little mercies that we try to find in disasters like this.
And two more very quick things about that, a civilian
school teacher was on board for that flight for the
first time, and the nation was absolutely heartbroken to see

(44:51):
her die at the time. But what they did not
know is at one point Big Bird from Sesame Street
was going to be on that flight, a flight light
that was obviously watched by every school in America live,
and they would have watched Big Bird die. So yeah,
little mercies. Well, if your second favorite podcast hasn't brung

(45:13):
comfort to your soul over our shared fragility and empathic
connection to the tragically deceased, why not consider becoming a
supporter of the one show that does it really helped
fulfill my dream of doing this full time. And if
you and a few thousand of your friends could spare
a pucker two you have no idea what the future
might hold. Before I tell you about Patreon. If you're

(45:34):
into it but aren't looking for a whole relationship, you
can visit me at buy me a coffee dot com
slash Doomsday and just make a one time donation. And
those of you who do, I do appreciate you. I
myself think getting episodes a little early, with no sponsor
interruptions and with additional ridiculously interesting material in each new
episode is worth it and if you agree, you can

(45:57):
find out more and join us all at patreon dot
com slash funeral Kazoo. A quick but heartfelt shout out
to Mike Dodgson, Rob Orton, Hey Rob, Jasmine Russo, Francine Alabama,
and Fiel Fross. Sorry feel Frost. I hope I'm not
mispronouncing that. I apologize. I haven't had a chance to

(46:18):
get in touch with you before recording this to confirm
your pronunciation. But hey man, welcome aboard and thank you again.
And I can't underline this point enough. There is literally
no show without you. So for those of you do
help support, please pat yourself on the back and of course,
as always, everyone can reach out to me on Twitter,
Instagram and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, where you can fire

(46:39):
me an email to Doomsday pod at gmail dot com.
Oh and if you're on TikTok, I know it's probably
been about two years, but I just finally got my
password back, so so you can check that out at
Doomsday dot the Dot podcast on TikTok. Older episodes can
be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there,
please leave us a review and tell your friends. And

(47:00):
I wanted to thank everyone leaving reviews on Spotify. Sorry
it takes me so long to see them. I always
thank all my Patreon listeners, new and old, for their
support and encouragement. But I also say, if you can
spare the money and had to choose, I ask you
to consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic
is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance

(47:22):
around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters
and crises. Through often the first and sometimes the only
team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations,
and to date they have helped over six million people
across eighty nine different countries. You can learn more and
donate at Globalmenic dot Ca. On the next episode. Looking

(47:46):
back at our episodes this year, we have seen an
awful lot of fire, so I don't know, maybe we
could take a minute to cool off in the greatest
floodwaters to ever cover the American landscape. Maybe we could
take a minute to cool off in the gentle lapping
waters of the greatest flood to ever cross the American landscape.

(48:06):
It's the Great Johnstown Flood of eighteen eighty nine. We'll
talk soon. Safety Gog goes off, and thanks for listening.

All Episodes

The Great Baku Metro Fire of 1995 | Episode 87

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Great Baku Metro Fire of 1995 | Episode 87