VIAREGGIO TRAIN DERAILMENT

It is 23:48 hours on the 29th June 2009. A tanker train is passing through the seaside town of Viareggio, famed the world over for its carnival and elegant riviera beach front. The train of 14 tankers is on its way to Naples with a cargo of LPG gas that it collected in a refinery in Northern Italy. Something breaks and the first tanker, directly behind the locomotive, comes off the rails and tips over on its side, dragging all the others with it and ripping a gash in the first tank. Invisible but deadly natural gas begins seeping through the neighbourhood. Ninety six seconds later the whole area explodes. The fire spreads and the explosions create a fireball that spreads to the nearby homes and parked cars, killing a dozen people, leaving the survivors with horrible burns.  The fire left 34 dead. The investigation revealed a sequence of unfortunate events sparked by a small, material failure in the front axle of the first tanker.