The Balvano Train Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
217,285
Published 2024-05-14
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:38 - Background
04:31 - The Balvano Train Disaster
08:36 - The Aftermath
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
SOURCES:
► “Titanic of train disasters: Italy finally commemorates hushed-up wartime tragedy that killed more than 600 people” by Nick Squires, published by the Telegraph, March 2017. Link: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/02/titanic-train-…
► “Italy: Death Train” published by Time Magazine, April 1951. Link: content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,8…
► “The Fate of the Black Market Express” by John Wolford, published by HubPages, April 2019. Link: discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Fate-of-the-Bl…
► “Balvano” by Antonio Bruno, published by Terredamare, June 2022. Link: terredamare.com/comuni/balvano
► “The Balvano Disaster” published by Italy on This Day, March 2021. Link: www.italyonthisday.com/2021/03/the-balvano-disaste…
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
All Comments (21)
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I never knew how much Italians suffered during the war until I stayed with a family in the 1980s... we roasted chestnuts from the local forests and the mother said that they reminded her of the war, as she would come home from school in the autumn and all there was to eat was locally-harvested chestnuts.
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Small mercy for the people asleep - they never knew about it 😔
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Bit of extra info: One of the survivor's hair turned completely gray due to the poisoning. Another was deemed mentally incompetent due to the severity of the poisoning. A relative of two of the victims erected a memorial in Belvano and one newspaper printed about the disaster but it was moreso a blurb due to the war
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What an absolute tragedy. Just goes to show how far-reaching the consequences of war can be.
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It feels extra tragic that things could've ended differently, if it only hadn't been for the detail that the front train crew couldn't communicate with their back end train crew.
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The deadliest rail accidents seem to happen in wartime. On top of the deliberate killing, wartime is such a fertile field for unintentional accidents.
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How many children or siblings waited for a loved one to return with food? Such a tragedy.
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I first learned of this in the 90s from a $2 book on disasters that I loved to read. It had a mere paragraph dedicated to it and I have barely seen any info on it since. Thanks for telling the full, detailed story of this tragedy.
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I suppose with all the upheaval that Italy experienced around about this time period it's perhaps not suprising that this tragedy likely didn't get the attention that it deserved
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This disaster s why both the Cascade and Moffat Tunnels have VERY extensive exhaust fan systems installed when the tunnels were built to quickly remove the deadly exhaust from locomotives when they were built originally.
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I can understand the need and desire to find a possible single factor responsible for a tragedy and fix it. However, sometimes you just have to accept it was a result of many factors and put it down in this case to the fog of war. You are not always going to get the full story and closure and sometimes have to move on. Another sympathetic and well presented view of a terrible event.
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A series of unfortunate events suffocating people in a tunnel is not a thing I would ever expect from a railway disaster. What a tragedy.
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I suggested this topic!! Thank you so much for doing it. I think three people lived. One was a black market dealer who escaped before authorities could question him. One person lived because he wrapped his scarf around head and it filtered some of the carbon monoxide. One of the men was too brain damaged to understand his wife and son died that day. A side effect of the carbon monoxide poisoning was it turned his hair from a rich black to a soapy colored grey. I absolutely love your videos!!
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A story in history that I never would have heard of unless I had never subscribed to FH years ago. This was fascinating 👌
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I love how much humanity and empathy you put into your videos of these tragedies.
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Children at home, waiting for a parent who will never return, not knowing what had happened to them...possibly never learning at all due to the censorship. Possibly starving further as a result. That is the real tragedy.
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Every Tuesday morning about half past 10 coffee and fascinating horror traditional now for about 3 years
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700 passengers wouls have added approximately 50tonnes more to the already overloaded train.
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Makes you wonder how many other tragedies were kept secret under the guise of “morale”. At least most were asleep. Those poor families left behind never getting acknowledgment or compensation. Just more daily suffering.
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I absolutely love your videos… I’ve never seen a better take on tragedy… Thank you so much
