Russian electrician a hero
2009-11-29 17:08
Khmelyovka - Sergei Vasilyev has probably never watched Hero, a Hollywood movie in which Dustin Hoffman's character rescues passengers from a crashed airliner and then sees others steal the limelight.
But on Friday the Russian electrician found himself living out a very similar scenario, when a passenger train was derailed by a bomb blast near the electrical substation where he was the only person on duty that cold November night.
Vasilyev, a modest man in his mid-fifties, immediately rushed to the scene of the wreck, located in forests and swamps a six-hour drive from Moscow.
With the help of two passengers, he brought around 50 people from the mangled train into his substation, his superiors said.
"He simply carried people out of the epicentre of the nightmare," said Yakov Zhelyabin, head of power supply for Oktyabrskaya Railroad, the unit of Russia's state railroad company that runs Moscow-Saint Petersburg trains.
Zhelyabin spoke to AFP in the small brick building of the Khmelyovka substation, close to the disaster site.
From the beginning of the rescue operation, Russian officials regularly reported the success of efforts to save the victims, fix the tracks and investigate the bombing.
No panic
"There was no panic. Passengers helped passengers," Vladimir Yakunin, chief of state railroad giant Russian Railways, told reporters as he arrived to inspect the site.
But few spoke about the very first hours after the Nevsky Express wreck or the man who was the first to help.
Access to the site was limited because of poor roads - Russia's perennial scourge - and the first ambulances arrived only an hour and a half after the disaster, said Vasilyev's immediate supervisor, Oleg Panfilov.
Until they arrived the shocked, bleeding passengers were left to their own devices, Panfilov said.
Vasilyev brought the injured into the warm premises of his substation and laid them on blankets on the floor.
Three passengers died in the substation. "There was no one here" to help, Panfilov said. "But he didn't lose heart," he added.
Zhelyabin, who is based in St Petersburg, said rescue efforts were hindered by the fact that there were not enough ambulances.
Yakunin, the Russian Railways chief, told reporters 21 people had been helped immediately at the substation - but made no reference to Vasilyev.
Officials say around 25 people died and 104 were injured in the disaster, though a final death toll has not yet been released.
Soaked in blood
"When we arrived everything here was soaked in blood," Zhelyabin said of the substation. "The smell of blood hung over here," he recalled.
By Saturday evening, that smell was gone and the station was cleaned up, a bloodstain on a bench being one of the few reminders of the tragedy.
Outside the substation, blankets and mattresses from the train still littered the tracks and mangled train carriages waited to be carried away.
In an interview with AFP, Vasilyev insisted he did nothing special.
"I just rendered people some help," he said by telephone from his home, where he was resting.
He recalled that power signals were interrupted around 22:00 on Friday, the time when a bomb explosion derailed the train.
Asked how many people he helped, Vasilyev said: "I have not counted."
"He is modest," said Panfilov. "But that this man has saved people's lives is a fact."
Zhelyabin put it more simply: "He's a hero of our time."
Looting
The two officials at the substation, surrounded by tiny run-down villages, said that what the electrician did was not the only example of human dignity amid the grimmest conditions.
Two employees from a neighbouring substation who also came to help found a bag stuffed with cash on the train, Panfilov said.
They handed the bag to the authorities, Panfilov said, though it contained $23 800 - an amount each of them would need more than four years to earn.
By contrast, "some people tried to loot", said Zhelyabin, without elaborating.
The Nevsky Express, which covers the distance between Moscow and Saint Petersburg in 4.5 hours, is an elite train favoured by well-off Russians.