In the early morning of July 28, 1976, 40 trains carrying more than a thousand passengers arrived in Tangshan from Qiqihar. The sleeping city is particularly peaceful, and there are not many passengers getting on and off the station. The train stopped for 7 minutes, and at 3:30 a.m., the train started, and they moved at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour along the Tsuyama Line Railway.
It was almost time to reach the final station, Beijing, and the crew and passengers were looking forward to the dawn with peace of mind. Soon after, there was a sharp light coming from the front of the car, but it was not dawn, but fire!
At 3:42, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake broke out in Tangshan. Just 10 minutes after leaving the city center, the 40 trains were shaken off track, the internal combustion locomotive broke down and caught fire, and in an instant, more than a thousand passengers were trapped in the wilderness and in danger of explosion.
But the crisis was eventually resolved by people's selflessness and mutual help, and the 40 trains not only got out of trouble, but also sent help to the victims.
How exactly did they do it?
Today we will review the miracle of this disaster. New friends may wish to click on the attention, we continue to read on.
The Tangshan earthquake broke out in the early hours of the morning. At this point in time, the 40th train is located between Tangshan Station and Xugezhuang Station, surrounded by a wilderness and inaccessible.
In the early hours of the morning, the area is exceptionally quiet, with only the sound of trains echoing. Most of the passengers on the bus were oil workers from the People's Liberation Army and Daqing in the northeast, and these young and strong passengers were tired and fell asleep. Most of the crew members also rested in the carriages. At the moment of the disaster, the strong shaking woke everyone up.
The impact of the earthquake deformed the rails, and 7 carriages of the 40 trains that were moving at high speed were derailed, and 1 luggage car was completely overturned. Many passengers were tossed to the ground, luggage fell, carriages deformed, and passengers clutched the table and handles with uneasiness. In the carriage where the crew was resting, the conductor Zhang Lin rolled from the bottom bunk to the ground, and he tried to stand up, but another bump caused him to fall again.
At this time, the emergency brake brake of the train was activated. The train finally stopped moving, and people looked at each other, not understanding what was happening. There was no time to think about why, and it was very dangerous for the train to stop on the tracks. The flight attendant group immediately took action. Zhang Lin ordered the two attendants to quickly set up beacon lights 50 meters away from the front and rear of the car, warning the train that might be coming, and then see what was going on outside.
It was drizzling rain outside the car, visibility was so poor that the flight attendant who got off the bus didn't see anything clearly. Inside the train, another conductor, He Qing, led the attendants to check the carriages one by one and count the injured.
Just then, the locomotive crew suddenly erupted in flames. Pulling the 40 trains are two Dongfeng 11 diesel locomotives with 7 tons of diesel fuel in their tanks. One of the fuel tanks at the head of the car was damaged in the upheaval, diesel fuel leaked along the fuselage on the rails, and when braking urgently, the sparks from the friction between the tires and the rails ignited the fuel tanks, and in an instant, the fire flew high.
The crew was terrified, and if the fire continued, it was bound to cause an explosion. They immediately turned and rushed to the front of the car to fight the fire. The fire extinguishers did not work, so they carried water from the mud ditch outside the car to extinguish the fire, and there was no container in their hands, so they had to eat the pots and pans in the car to carry water. The passengers also picked up the rice bowls and teacups in their hands and used all means to transport water to fight the fire.
But this little water had no effect on the diesel fire, the crew did not give up, they used wet bedding to cover the head fire, so they rushed into the fire site and filled the locomotive with mud to extinguish the fire. These flight attendants are close to a death squad, and the slightest carelessness can be engulfed by an explosion. When the Martian point splashed on them, the passengers behind them immediately splashed with muddy water. With the concerted efforts of the crew and passengers, the fire was finally extinguished. The conductor, Feng Jiachun, had fainted, and several attendants were injured in the firefighting.
But their efforts were exchanged for the safety of more than a thousand passengers.
At this time, the sky is slightly bright. Everyone can finally see the situation outside. But the sight in front of them made everyone's scalps tingle. The Fengnan District of Tangshan City is already in ruins, and the original towering factories have been flattened.
Only then did everyone realize that a serious earthquake had occurred in Tangshan.
The 40 trains were still expecting the rescue of Tangshan, but they did not expect that they had become the closest group to the Tangshan epicenter area that had not yet been destroyed. Although the carriage was damaged, it could also allow everyone to avoid the wind and rain, and although the personnel were injured, looking at the ruins of the city, the injured felt that they were lucky.
The biggest problem facing the crowd on the 40th train is two. One is how to inform the outside world of the news that 40 trains are trapped. The second is how to solve the diet problem of more than a thousand people.
According to the original plan, the 40 trains would reach the final station in Beijing in the morning, so there was no need to prepare breakfast. When the train passed through Tangshan, there was no supplementary ingredients, and only 30 kilograms of rice remaining for dinner were left in the dining car. That's not enough for a thousand people to eat a meal.
Looking at the earthquake, the conductor He Qing predicted that they would be trapped for a long time. They first sent a flight attendant to set off on foot along the tracks in the direction of Jinjing, to report the situation of the 40 trains. But the problem of eating is not easy to solve.
The passengers first took out their own dry food. Sorghum rice, corn ballast, beans of all kinds, a variety of grains were piled together, but this was still not enough, so some potatoes were picked up from the nearby fields.
In order to cook rice, people pulled out a large cauldron from the dining car, and the stove on the car was no longer available, so the flight attendant had to use the old sleepers next to the railway to make a fire. A conundrum arises. The rain that day wet the wood, and the fire could not be lit. The strong oil workers and the People's Liberation Army came out, and they came up with an idea, blowing with their mouths, and everyone took turns blowing. The fire brigade had just stopped, and the 40th train had a blow-off line again, and passengers lined up in long lines to blow fire one by one. Two hours later, the fire was finally lit.
This seemingly stupid method saved everyone.
The flight attendants set up pots and boiled porridge. There are all kinds of grains in the porridge, and the passengers jokingly call it Laba porridge, but this porridge is actually very thin, and each person can only get two spoonfuls, but everyone has no complaints.
At this time, the cry of a baby was heard in the carriage. He Qing asked a question to know that the baby mother had not eaten since dinner, this thin porridge was not hungry, it was weaned, and the baby could not eat milk and cried hungry.
He Qing immediately asked the dining car attendant to find some more food to eat, and finally brought the mother a bowl of hot egg noodles. The passengers gathered around the mother, everyone hungry and watching, and no one competed with her. The mother was embarrassed to eat, and repeatedly pushed and shoved, and a passenger spoke: "You can't eat, you have to eat for the sake of the child." You don't eat, you're sorry for the passengers. The mother ate the noodles with tears in her eyes. By the afternoon, she had finally milked her child. The safety of the little life made everyone around them breathe a sigh of relief.
At this time, the 40 trains in the wilderness seemed to be isolated by the disaster into a small world. The conductor, Zhang Lin, announced the establishment of a temporary party branch, and he demanded that the attendants must continue to serve the passengers, and the passengers could not break away from the group without authorization. For the common safety of all, we must work together to tide over the difficulties.
Zhang Lin sent a team of men along the railway. At the front of a bridge there is a building that resembles a warehouse, where you can go to find food. Then he organized a group of rescue teams to the nearest County of Fengnan to provide disaster relief. Fifty or sixty young men scrambled to sign up. When they arrived at the county seat, they were on a flat field, and except for the police watchtower, the houses in Fengnan County were all in ruins. The rescue team immediately began to rush to rescue the victims.
Many were buried under the rubble, and the rescue team dug up several people with bare hands, including the deputy county magistrate of Fengnan County. The people who came out of the rescue helped them to the train.
The train has prepared porridge for the victims, and some people's liberation army knows first aid knowledge and can help the victims heal their wounds. The train is working in an orderly manner both inside and out.
When the rescue team returned to the train at night, they ate a thick porridge of Laba. The group that had gone to the warehouse had dug up dry food from under the rubble, and they had no pockets in their hands, so they used their trouser tubes to tie them up and pack them back, which solved everyone's second meal. In order to save, this porridge was also very thin, but the passengers who stayed behind left the thickest part of the bottom to the rescue team.
Mosquitoes on a midsummer night are so poisonous that passengers have to hide in the carriages and close the doors and windows. In the sweltering heat, the carriage resembled a steamer. Fortunately, the flight crew found a small water hole not far away, surrounded by a small bathhouse with a quilt, and Zhang Lin immediately organized men and women to go to the water hole in batches to bathe.
The remaining locomotive can also power the carriage, and Zhang Lin has been giving instructions by broadcasting.
First of all, the passengers are registered according to the groups of carriages, and all the staff implement military management, one carriage is a platoon, and the platoon leader is the People's Liberation Army among the passengers. Eating, sleeping, and bathing are all carried out in groups, which ensures that passengers do not compete in the system. But in fact, the passengers of the 40 trains are very selfless, they have always put people first, and they have to be humble to each other when eating.
Under such a serious natural disaster, the 40 trains have always maintained the nobility of human nature.
After being trapped for 3 days, the flight attendants who went out to report the letter brought back 48 buses. These passenger cars were contacted from the Tianjin Railway Sub-Bureau, and when the attendants reported the situation to them, they all thought that the 40 trains would have a very difficult time, but they did not expect that more than a thousand passengers on the scene were always in order, and when they got on the train, they also lined up one by one in groups.
After the bus sent off the passengers, the crew stayed on the 40th train, and they had to stick to their posts and move in and out with the train. That night, another team of people arrived at the 40th train derailment point. They actually came from the Qiqihar Railway Sub-bureau, the train reached Shanhaiguan and then cut off the road, and they walked 200 kilometers to Xu Gezhuang to search and rescue.
Deputy Director Ge, the leader of the team, carried a bottle of liquor in his hand and a stack of money in his bag, which was intended to pay tribute to the victims, and the money was used for burial. Deputy Director Ge told the crew that when he heard the news of the earthquake, he thought that the 40 trains must have suffered a major disaster, and he did not expect such a miracle to occur.
The flight attendants laughed and shared the bottle of liquor with him.
On August 8, a week after the Tangshan earthquake, the crew of the 40th train embarked on the road back to Qiqihar on a repaired train. They always stuck to their posts, which created the miracle of the earthquake.
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