Two railway workers saved the Crimean Bridge from global destruction after the terrorist attack on October 8. In the first minutes after the explosion, they managed to unhook the burning tanks and move the locomotive away, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Driver Yuri Kvashnin and assistant driver Viktor Proshin were driving goods from Taman-Pasazhirskaya station. When we approached the arches of the Crimean Bridge, we heard a bang with an explosion.
“At first we didn’t really understand what had happened - our diesel locomotive “jumped” and the lights on the bridge immediately went out. We looked out the window of the cabin and saw that the tank was burning near the tail of the train. It was necessary to act. To be honest, at that moment we didn’t think about ourselves at all, the main thing in our heads was to eliminate, extinguish, prevent the fire from spreading,” said Kvashnin.
He remained in the cockpit to monitor the instruments and operate the brakes. The assistant was given the task of taking the boots and fixing the tanks as close to the fire as possible in order to move the whole ones away from the epicenter.
“I ran as close to the fire as possible and secured 34 cars with six brake shoes. I had to run several times, they are still heavy. I ran to the head of the train and we set off. Everything took 10 minutes, but it was really scary,” recalls Proshin.
In total, there were 59 cars on the train; 25 were uncoupled. It was necessary not only to move the surviving part of the train to a safe distance, but also to secure the burning fuel tanks so that they would not roll off the bridge in the direction of Taman - this threatened even greater damage.
The locomotive crew quickly managed to unhook the ignited tanks and move the undamaged train to the Kerch station. Both railway workers are residents of Kerch. Both have been working at the Crimean Railway for more than 15 years. Kvashnin began his career as an electrician, in 2004 he received a certificate as an assistant driver of a diesel locomotive, and in 2019 he became a driver. Proshin came to the railway in 2006. He followed in the footsteps of his father, who worked as a machinist all his life.