page_title: Balvano train disaster
section_title: Responsibility
hierarchical_section_title: Balvano train disaster / Responsibility
caption_attribution_description: English: Victims of Balvano train disaster (1944)
context_page_description: The Balvano train disaster was the deadliest railway accident in Italian history and one of the worst railway disasters ever. It occurred on the night between 2-3 March 1944 in Balvano, Italy. Over 500 people in a steam-hauled, coal-burning freight train died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a protracted stall in a tunnel.
context_section_description: The committee did not note any responsibility for the incident, which was considered as caused by force majeure. However, hypotheses were stated for some minor infractions: the train should not have received authorisation to start from Battipaglia even if the two locomotives were nominally sufficient for towing, as it was known that the coal supplied was not able to develop sufficient power to maintain the maximum performance of the machines, and the train should have been put in order with some new regulations.
  Concerns were raised about the timeliness of aid and the actions undertaken by the station masters of Balvano and Bella-Muro, who did not act to determine the location of the train when it appeared late on the roadmap. However, in the post-war confusion it was usual for communications to be irregular, and trains could be greatly delayed. It was not uncommon that it would take over two hours to travel the mountainous 7 km between the two stations.
  Initially it was also assumed that the drivers had not properly regulated sand boxes, which could prevent wheel spin.
  Finally, the catastrophe was attributed mainly to:
  A combination of material causes, such as dense fog, atmospheric haze, complete lack of wind, which did not keep the natural ventilation of the tunnel, wet rails, etc., causes that unfortunately occurred all at once and in rapid succession. The train stopped because of the fact that it slid on the rails and the staff of the machines had been overwhelmed by the produced gas, before they could act to move the train out of the tunnel. Due to the presence of carbon monoxide, extraordinarily poisonous, it produced the asphyxiation of stowaways. The action of this gas is so rapid, that the tragedy occurred before any aid could be brought from the outside.
  It was noted that the provisions for the composition of the train came straight from the Allied Command, and that in any case the train and station staff could not stop the train and modify it. The Command itself organized a train to check the condition of the disaster, with staff equipped with oxygen masks, which recognized the actual development of abnormal amounts of toxic gases.
  Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane declined all responsibility, claiming that in the complex end-of-war set up (where Italian authorities coexisted with the US command) they could not even immediately determine who had the responsibility for the management of one particular train. However the company could be blamed because at that time, despite the high demand on the route between Naples and Potenza, there was only one scheduled passenger train (train 8021), which left from Naples twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which prompted an increase in illegal ridership on freight trains.
  In attempt to prevent criticism, the Ministry of Treasury paid compensation to the families of all identified victims as if they were war victims (although it was paid more than 15 years afterwards.)
caption: Victims of the disaster
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