The Eséka Train Disaster of 2016 | Episode 109

On today's very special Return to Africa episode, all people wanted to do was get to work, but the weather got bad enough to the point where the road said you shall not pass. Your life is in danger. And the train took one look at this and said, hold my beer. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday, History's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and awe inspiring but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you will learn how the locateation of today's story sounds all toasty and hot to the uninitiated, but is actually one of the wettest places on Earth. We will describe a claustrophobic and unenviable situation somewhere between the roller skating in the back of the truck stunt from Jackass and the trash compactor scene from Star Wars, and I will actually say that no one cho chooses to be in today's kind of story, which I only call out this early to ask for your forgiveness. And if you were listening on Patreon, you would learn about the US military's ambitions to turn its enemies into be coded gay diarrhea fanatics and how they also inspired Miko's Cassadine's aims of destroying the world in the nineteen eighties with an evil weather machine. And if you were listening to this on Patreon, you would learn about the US military's ambitions to turn its enemies into be coded gay diarrhea fanatics and how they also inspired Miko's Cassidine's aims of destroying the world in the nineteen eighties with an evil weather machine. We will visit a place so rainy that you will have no choice but to assume that I'm lying, and we will walk through a list of all the different awful things that can happen to your spine. Also, at the end of this episode, I am going to announce the results of a naming contest we held for our hungry gorilla friend, and I will be sharing this story behind it, which fair warning, is fairly emotional. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating, or even in mixed company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room. Put on your headphones and safety classes, and let's begin. If I were trying to summarize the beauty and diversity and vastness of all of Africa, like shoehorn it into a single word, first I go, and then I'd probably go to my word to day calendar and come back with something like multitudinal. I mean, as continents go, Africa is huge. You pave it flat and you could park just under two and a half trillion Dodge caravans on it. It is a massive and sprawling continent. This is a place that could comfortably fit all of the US, China, and India inside of it with wound despair. And people are always fond of saying how China and India each have a popular around one and a half billion. Well, you know what, I've never actually heard anyone mentioned before the population of Africa. So I looked it up and according to the UN, as of about three weeks ago, the current population of Africa is one point five seven six billion people. This place is home to thousands of distinct ethnic groups with about two thousand different languages, living in everything from small rural villages where life is still tied closely to the land, to massive megacities like Legos So Cairo that have tens of millions of people living there. And Africa isn't just diverse compared to the rest of the world, it's diverse compared to itself. It's made up of fifty four different countries, each of them being wholly unique and interesting. But of all of those countries, one has been singled out by its neighbors as being kind of like the Epcot center of African countries, Cameroon. We haven't been here since nineteen eighty six, when that volcanic crater at Lake Nios burped hard in a limnic eruption that displaced that huge cloud of carbon dioxide that poured down across the landscape and displaced seventeen hundred people from their mortgages. Anyway, I was saying, Cameroon is kind of like a microcosm of the continent where you can experience many African environments and cultures all in one place. In the south, equatorial rainforests stretched towards the coast, while the west rises into volcanic highlands dominated by Mount Cameroon, one of Africa's most active volcanoes. And then in the north, the landscape opens into rolling savannahs and eventually into the Sahara. Early European explorers to the area sometimes called it white Man's Grave because of all the malaria, the yellow fever, and all the other tropical diseases that they had no immunity to other than their corpses. They also gave Cameroon its name. To that point, the people of the area just called themselves by their different kingdoms or peoples or regions, pretty much exactly the way it worked in Europe. But when the Portuguese explorers arrived around fourteen seventy two, the first thing they noticed was all the shrimp in the watery river, so they started calling it the Rio dos Cameos, or the River of Shrimp. The Germans turned it into something like Cameron, then the French came and turned it into something like came around and bing bang boom. Today we just say Cameroon. There are more than two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, and that makes Cameroon one of the most linguistically dense countries in the world. I mean in one country. That is more languages that are spoken across all of Europe. Thankfully, for us to day, for the most part, will be okay with us English or French, and there is a lot to see, and to day we will be seeing it by rail. There's just something about the experience of taking in the landscape as a moving canvas, and that view changes and morphs over time as one place slowly becomes another. Travel by rail offers a way of seeing and passing through parts of a land that cars and plains just can't offer. Each station stop is greeted by scores of friendly vendors who line the train with food and drinks and anything you might need for sale. The scene is always loud and alive, and everything is chatter and excitement and not really chaotic at all until the train starts moving again, and like every good hand shape, it breaks up and off we go. And today we will be joining the standard cam Rail intercity run on inter city train number one fifty two. We will be leaving the country's capital, Yaounde and then passing through low hills and shallow valleys as we had towards du Wala. It's the country's main economic hub and port and also its largest city. The whole trip is about two hundred seventy kilometers or one hundred and sixty miles were scheduled to depart at eleven a m and it should take about three hours depending on how things go see Timetables in Cameroon are less rigid than North American or European rail systems, and this was a mixed service, so depending on the type of train, it could end up stopping anywhere from five to forty times. Delays and operational changes and variable run times are common, especially if unusual circumstances place the system under strain, and to day Friday would be a busy day on the train. Now, when you try to think about Cameroon, you're probably not thinking about raincoats or surfboards, but it may surprise you to learn that parts of Cameroon are some of the wettest places on Earth. When you think of rain, we tend to think about places like London or Seattle, and for the record, London gets about six hundred millimeters of rain in a year and Seattle can get as much as nine hundred and fifty that's adorable. In Yaounde, both spring and fall are rainy seasons and they can get as much as seventeen hundred millimeters a year, while in d Walla they can get as much as four thousand millimeters of rain in a year. Obviously, it's one of the wettest major cities in Africa, which in its defense, it sits right on the coast, sucking up moisture from the Gulf of Guinea. And yeah, it's pretty wild that the same country that contains mere desert like conditions in the north is also one of the wettest places on Earth. Oh, I don't even mean Duala. The rainiest place in Cameroon is called the Bunchka. It sits at the base of Mount Cameroon and skipping an awful lot of geography here, it basically exists as a rain trap for moist Atlantic air and it gets about ten thousand millimeters of rain in a year. That is thirty feet of rain. We are visiting in twenty sixteen and it may not be the rainiest year on record, but that is not for lack of trying. In the days before our arrival, heavy rains were in full effect, which, albeit good for agriculture and growth, it can be bad for your day planner. The most popular route between Yaoo Day and Duala is the National Road and three. It's basically the country's primary economic lifeline. Think of d N three as basically two hundred and fifty kilometers or one hundred and fifty five miles of asphalt road moving people in goods, connecting the brain and the heart of the country. The majority of all their imports and exports move daily along its length, and about fifteen thousand vehicles do this dance every day, making it the busiest road in the country by far, and with so many heavy ass buses and cargo trucks crossing it daily, it is prey to a thought of where and tear, which, since its raining, I'll point out, makes it vulnerable to erosion. I'm sure there have been times in heavy rains where sections of the road might become degraded or turn into mud, and everybody's gps is go wild trying to calculate new arrival times, and even the smallest cracking or erosion can make it vulnerable to damage. Like we said, water gets in and the soil becomes fully saturated like a sponge that can't hold any more water. Any kind of drainage becomes overwhelmed or blocked by debris, but the water still has to go somewhere, which really scours the ground. Most modern roads are layered. You cut your asphalt or concrete surface, sitting on the base of gravel or crutched stone, sitting on the subgrade, which is basically compacted soil. Well, what happens in situations like this is it's a little like taking a fire hose to your roof tiles. All that water pressure trying to find a way to force its way under and over and sometimes through them. And water is very good at that kind of thing. Well, heavy rain infiltrates through the cracks or the edges and just attacks the subgrade, blasting it away, attacking the road from above and below. And once that soil loses all of its strength, the layers above it had nothing to sit on and pay collapse. And I don't just mean it weakened and sunk portions of the roadway. I am talking about carrying the road away in pieces like islands, creating full with gaps that cut across the entire highway. Whole. Sections of the N three simply collapsed and disappeared. The sides of the road turned into channels of fast moving water before they slumped and slid away too. What ground remained had become soft and unstable, so vehicles were having a hell of a time trying to turn around on the narrow, unstable ground. Large trucks didn't have a prayer, and it wasn't just the road itself. Further down, swollen waterways hit a bridge and erod at the base of the supports, eating away at the ground that held the thing up until it failed, and the whole thing l a bath. I don't know what the worst traffic you've ever sat through was, but this was probably worse. Now. Things can always be worse, and for the purposes of today's story, the worst part turned out to be that there were no real good detours to replace the N three. The best path between the two cities had been reduced to fragments of road with nothing connecting them. It had been effectively powerwashed into pieces RIP and three. But all was not lost. There was still one last way to get between Yaundai and Duala. That's right, the Iron Road, the Steel Highway, the magic carpet of the industrial age. I am, of course, referring to the romance of rail traffic. Cam Rail offered service between the capital and the hub, and their services had not been affected by the weather, and as word quickly spread of this, as you can imagine, it became the place to be. Some people just abandoned their vehicles and made their way to the Yanday Central station. It has a simple concrete exterior, but it really looks like they had rain in mind when they built it. It has these giant shaded overhangs that kind of ruffle the outside like a giant parasol. Inside, you're going to find a modest concourse with ticket counters and waiting areas that spill out onto the platforms. Speaking of spilling onto platforms, you would not believe how quickly Yonday Central became the most popular place in the country, better than sitting in the mud. On the end, three words spread fast, and it was the only ticket in town for the day, and hoardes began arriving at the station. Families, business travelers, and tire buses full of disappointed people, all arriving in droves orderly lines to the ticket windows turned into a chaotic jam of humanity, all there against their will because it was necessary. Everyone here had the same idea. And we're trying to board the eleven AM intercity train number one fifty two to Duwalla, and under normal circumstances you might have up to eighty people in a car, but today we are going to look at doubling that number. There were only so many seats and way too many butts, so we're looking at some real people sitting in other people's laps. Kind of stuff. The train will be taking today had a diesel electric locomotive. It was a French built Alstam CC twenty six hundred series, if you're into that kind of thing. They were workhorses designed to chug, not for sprinting, and tickets were being sold beyond capacity and not making the train cars larger, they had to settle for making them more numerous. A typical train on that route would carry around nine cars, but today that was going to be increased to about thirteen. Now. The conductor of one point two was scheduled to leave Yon day around eleven, like we said, but first he just wanted to get a few things off his chest. More cars meant more capacity, but they also made her much heavier, which would make her harder to control. Imagine driving a Dodge caravan packed to the roof with passengers, and then add five U haul trailers to the that his problem was as the driver, adding all those extra cars changed every aspect of the ride. The balance would be different, the braking would be different, stopping distances would be totally different. And to say he wasn't psyched up about taking personal responsibility for the vehicle and all aboard her was an understatement. And although his complaints were flown up the food chain where they were heard by superiors who had more of a yah but kind of an attitude, and they were dismissed. And would you look at that, it's time to go all aboard. As one point fifty two approached the platform, you might say what platform? The crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, taking up every available inch of space, and all heads were turned in anticipation of the train's arrival. They weren't necessarily getting a seat, but they were excited by the opportunity. As the train squealed to a halt, the doors opened and the crowd surged aboard. It wasn't aggressive, but it wasn't polite either. People pressed into whatever space they could find, seats, ailes, laps, doorways, pressed into the windows like hams. The station attendants commanded, did everyone to take one big inhale at the count of three, and that would allow the doors to be squeezed shut around them. The train departed yon day with as many as thirteen hundred passengers, which was far beyond the typical capacity. People apologized as they jostled for space. The heat of the day mixed with the heat of the crowd made it impossible to ignore all the other bodies. Admittedly, these were highly unusual circumstances, but even with the windows open, it was still pretty bad. No one was afraid, but they were acutely aware this was not normal. The journey may have been more crowded and louder than usual, but it was a journey. And journey we do through dense tropical greenery and rolling hills and stretches of rainforest, broken up by rivers and vines and towering trees that press in close to the railway, through dense tropical greenery and rolling hills and stretches of rainforest broken up by rivers and steep embankments, and the occasional village. Obviously, it would be a more enjoyable view if you didn't have someone's armpit resting on your scalp. But we are ignoring that as we make our way approaching a Seka, the dense foliage is slowly replaced by coastal lowlands. You would describe this as a semi rural zone. That means there are small communities scattered about, but no water parks or outlet malls. It's not like there's a supermarket or a I don't know, ambulance substation on every corner. The train's path was designed to follow the natural terrain rather than just bulldozing straight through it. The track on this part of the trip includes a sloping, inclined curve that requires reduced speed, and on one side of that curve, the ground falls away into a sloped and the driver already initiated breaking well before the curve. But imagine how your car would react if your car were actually a cement truck. At best, you'd be tokyo drifting your way around the curve, scaring the the Jesus out of everyone around you, not to mention your passengers. The train was on an incline as it approached, it was heavier than expected, and it was moving way too fast. Now, if you drive, you know that when you are leaning into a curve section of road, you apply the brakes, which reduces the amount of sideways inertia and helps keep things comfortable aboard the train. The brakes were applied, but they were not nearly as effective as hoped. The instant the curve began, the rails started to bend. What happened was the entire mass of the train tried to continue going straight ahead because of a little something called momentum. Seventeenth century philosopher and long time listener of the show, Renee des Cartes came up with the whole idea. The same Renee deed that declared I think therefore I am also gave us the idea that the more mass and speed our train has, the more it wants to continue on a straight line, and the harder it is to stop or change direction. In this case, the track wants the train to curve, and trains grudgingly oblige. But in this case those forces were starting to shift sideways. Now you may have wondered how trains even work, meaning how they keep from falling off the rails the entire time. It's simple, really, Trains stay on the tracks because the wheels have these little lips on the outside that hug the rails like guides. They call them flanges, which are not to be confused with airplane falangies, and these help keep it from slipping off, and the weight of the train does the rest at a safe speed. This has always worked great with no big whoop, but today there was some whoop. Normally we would approach the slow speed turn at no more than forty kilometers or twenty five miles per hour per the set speed limit. But right now we find ourselves moving at about ninety kilometers or fifty six miles an hour. At this speed, the suspension compresses and the train cars start to lean inside. The train passengers would have felt a sudden, hard pull sideways, and those who were seated found themselves pressed against one side of the car. At a safe speed, it get used to the inertia and the sensation would have leveled off, but not here. The sideways force kept increasing, Bags started to slide, and strangers became increasingly close. Anyone standing found themselves doing some hasty footwork and had to brace against anything they could to try to keep their balance before a heavy jolt raced through the car and everyone was violently thrown in multiple directions. At the same time. By the time anyone fully registered what was happening, it was on. There had been a point where recovery was possible, but that was over a long time ago. This moment had become irreversible. Between the forward momentum and the sideways forces and the rotational twisting between railcars, you would have better luck arm wrestling seventy five humpback whales than stopping this train. And yes, I did that map all for you. Jesus himself could have descended from upon high unto the scene, and even he would be all like, yeah, listen, this isn't really what I do, and just sort of skip back up. The moment that first axel slipped and a wheel left the the rail, that entire car was no longer being safely held and guided. The cars were now free to slide and pivot as they saw fit. Derail cars started to rotate, ever so slightly at first, then much much more aggressively, and because they are still coupled, the train car behind it is yanked dramatically out of alignment, and the third car is even worse on and on down the line, like drowning men dragging another with them, And instead of separating cleanly and going off on an adventure by themselves. Each car drags everything else with them. The train began to tear itself apart. It looked like it was fighting itself. Now. The best guess is that with the train, with the cars and the people and the extra cars and the extra people, would have weighed somewhere between eight hundred and one thousand tons. That is as much as two million pounds. Two million pounds moving at ninety six kilometers an hour in terms of raw energy, provides roughly roughly equivalent to seventy seven kilograms of T and T. To help you understand that better, that would be like trying to absorb the force of four hundred and forty four Dodge caravans traveling that fast and hitting you all at the same time, stand at the foot of a ten story building and have someone drop nine hundred tons on you, And that's effectively the same thing. As the curve continued, the cars, already under maximum sideways load, had no way to correct for it. The first one tip, then another, and another, and cars that had been upright seconds before were now rolling or slamming onto their sides. Metal began to farm under forces. It was never built too absorble. Cars behind still moving ran into those already off the tracks, and the couplings that held everything together acted like handcuffs as sections of the train folded in on each other. Passengers were thrown into seats and walls and against each other with tremendous violence as all the cars began to compress. Imagine the roller skating in the back of the truck stunt from Jackass combined with the trash compactor scene from Star Wars. Some cars held up better than others, Others ground to a stop, some still upright, some tilted, some overturned, but all down the embankment. Then, as quickly as it all started, the motion finally ceased, and everything returned to silence as people checked themselves for injuries and tried to figure out is now a good time to start screaming again? Light came in through broken windows and torn panels, and the air was filled with dust and the sound of people crying and calling out and looking for others, and of course the crunchy, incomplete squeals of the injure trying to move. Now. The cold reality of disasters like this is you have people who need help and then you have people who need tabulating, and then you have the injured. And what a diverse group that is. The injuries from the derailment were as severe as they were varied. Over six hundred people were injured. They'd been thrown violently as cars derailed and overturned. So many suffered blunt force trauma like head injuries and concussions, and internal bleeding and crush injuries from being pinned beneath debris, and of course all those other people limbs and ribs and pelvises were frequently broken, twisted metal and shattered glass, and the destroyed interior provided deep lacerations and penetrating wounds. You can barely imagine how much spinal cord damage could happen on a train that packed. There were even reports of small fires which led to burns as people came into contact with hot metal surfaces, But compared to a spinal injury or an internal decapitation, they weren't that bad. So you're trying to decide on your commute for the day, and the traffic report doesn't sound great, so you decide, I'm just going to take the train. Ah. The romance of life on the rails seeing the country from an unchallenged point of view, admiring the landscape as it graces passed like a portrait in your window. When you hear a squeak and now up is down, left is right, and everyone is flying everywhere and everything is chaos and screaming, and you realize your carry on bag just decapitated someone across the aisle. Would you know what to do? The biggest worry in a crash isn't the impact or the crash itself. It's all the secondary hazards, which we will come back to. Assuming for the moment you've survived the crash, your biggest worries are now structural collapse and fire and smoke and getting trampled or crushed by fellow passengers. In the first few seconds, your body is going to be flooded with adrenaline, which, as useful as it is, can actually mask injuries that could be life threatening. So provided you're not surrounded by fire, it is a good idea to take a sect to give yourself a thorough once over for injuries. Are you bleeding anywhere? Did you break anything? Is there anything you can't move? If any of that is the case, or you're having trouble breathing, or you're having trouble thinking or seeing. Clearly, you could have concussed or internally injured yourself, and sadly, in this game of shirts versus skins, you are now considered one of the walking wounded and will need to be carried out of there. You are not helping anyone. For everyone else who is not injured and not currently busy dragging someone out to safety, it is time to go. Always assume the situation could get worse when a train crashes between all the fuel and electrical systems, and of course these scraping to a halt, over rocks, firing, sparks everywhere. All of this makes the risk of fire very real. Plus the car that you're in could shift or roll or collapse. You just don't know. There have been train crashes that were complicated by the unexpected arrival of another train, So getting out of the train is job one. Getting as far from the wreckage as you can is a good second step. Let me say not everyone who dies in a train crash dies in the crash, so try to avoid climbing over people or unstable wreckage. If someone can't move themselves because of some unseen injury, your job becomes moving them as unaggressively as possible. It's hard to imagine a worse place to suffer a spinal injury than in the middle of a crushed popcan that used to be your train car. I can easily tell you if someone were bleeding that requires immediate and unyielding to repressure with anything clean and absorbent you can find. And if the bleeding won't stop, you're either going to want to fire me an email asking for a tourniquet, or you'll have to improvise one for yourself. But what about that guy who's playing full body tetris with the seating. That guy is going to need to be immobilized, extracted, entriaged. Now, the reality is the odds of your good intentions making things worse are not zero. So I want you to repeat after me, sir or matt. I appreciate that you are in a considerable amount of discomfort, and I am willing to help. But I am not a medical professional, and what I am about to attempt I learn on a podcast, and it should be in no way inferred that I have been deputized as a paramedic in training or anything. Blink if you have a problem with that. We want to keep these people as stable as possible, and we don't have a stretcher, so we're boy scouting the whole thing. Start by kneeling and placing your hands on both sides of the victim's head, holding it in a straight, neutral position if possible. Use whatever you can find to improvise some kind of next support and secure it with your shirt or belt or whatever you've got. This isn't to replace your hands, but it will help reduce motion. From there, you and all of your new friends are going to do a bit of a dance together. You're going to roll them onto their side and slap a gurney under them, except it's going to be weird and you don't have a gurney. Person one holds the head and neck while everyone else lines up along their shoulders, hips and legs, and you're all gonna roll them together and slide a blanket or a coat or door or wood board or whatever you have on hand underneath them before calmly rolling them back. Now, the worst case is you're alone with no equipment, and this person's going to die without you, So you're gonna have to do the only thing that you can. It's called a clothing drag, and the first time I read about it, I thought that they were going to suggest to s robing and creating a kind of DIY fabric stretcher. But no, keeping their head as still as possible, grab the victim by the collar or shoulders, and pull them in as straight a line as possible, and off you go. Now chooses to be in a train ax sident. But at least now you know that the scariest thing about it, besides the crash is everything that happens right after. The biggest issue here now was how long it took for proper rescue to arrive on scene, and how long injured passengers were forced to remain trapped. The only immediate medical care available came from the kindness of the uninjured, who pulled total strangers to safety through windows and gaps in the wreckage. The train had left Yon day to carry people to Duala, the way it did every day, but today it never made it past a Seka. The train had been haphazardly slapped full of people, so an accurate passenger count was tricky. What we do know is about seventy nine people were killed, with more than six one hundred others injured. So what happened? Well, first, a major roadway washed out, and as much as you think that would be a problem for the Road and Works department, it really became an issue for the rail company. With all the overflow, they found themselves scrambling to find extra train cars to increase capacity. However, one does not simply add entire train cars full of people without adding a ridiculous amount of weight. That means it would have been much harder to slow down, let alone stop. The train entered the section of track at a seka at almost twice the posted limit. The motor carriage had a rheostatic dynamic braking system, which sounds impressive unless it's not working. Let me explain the brakes like this. Things like trains and trucks use air brakes. Those work the opposite way a Dodge caravan might, where brake adds apply pressure against a day brake and that friction slows things down. In this case, a pressurized brake pipe runs the length of the train and those brakes are always on by default as long as air pressure is maintained. The brakes stay released, but if that pressure weakens, they start to lock up. Before departure, crews are supposed to verify braking across all of the cars. That way, if any single car had a brake issue, the crew could just manually isolate it so the rest of the train would continue operating smoothly. But if they were say busy, say if the train was overloaded with extra passenger cars added at the last minute due to high demand, any problems with their testing could I don't want to say be ignored, so I'm gonna say go undetected. In this case, the brakes were degraded, which reduce their effectiveness, and all the extra weight of all the extra everything only made things worse. The available braking force was not up to the challenge of handling all that weight and speed. As the train entered the curve, the force of all that weight eclipsed what the train or track could tolerate. Cars in the front slowed down, cars in the back did not, and then wheels could no longer stay on the rails. Multiple cars derailed, and the couplings made sure everyone else came with them after the first cars left the track. Because the braking system was so uneven rear cars compressed forward, jackknifing and telescoping and canceling for certificates up and down the track. Some cars derailed but stayed upright. Others were crushed or folded or severely deformed or partially collapsed. Several were stacked or tangled together after being dragged off the track. The worst damage occurred in cars that rolled over and then were compressed between other cars. Inside, survivors described a sudden, violent shaking, then a loss of balance, then pain and darkness and dust and debris. The train had been overloaded, but it was pointed out to me that overloaded doesn't really mean anything in the context of Africa. Everything is overloaded people, scooters, cars, trucks, trains, planes, you name it. Of course, the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the consequences. Local hospitals, particularly in a Seka, were quickly overwhelmed. Additional patients were moved to larger hospitals as far as Yonde and Duala. The president responded by conducting a commission of inquiry, and investigators determined the train was going way too fast for that section of track. Specifically, the inquiry report concluded that the train was speeding at ninety six kilometers or fifty nine miles per hour on a rail section with an extremely load speed limit of forty kilometers or almost thirty miles an hour, in an area with a steep slope and several sharp bends. It did not help that there were breaking issues from stem to stern, and because they were in such a hurry to get people moving, there were no inspections at Yowonday, and now those who decided to extend the train were under the microscope. Legal action was taken against cam Rail and several individuals involved in the operations and decision making for quote refusal by hierarchy to take into account the reservations expressed by the train driver about the above mentioned abnormalities and defects. Remember the driver taken on a last minute expansion to handle excess passengers which overloaded and extended beyond normal length on a train with funky brakes and no brake tests, and being told to operate it anyway. Well, that cost an life, which is a lot for a Friday morning. He had no idea what his stopping distance was, and even if he did, different cars were apparently going to break differently, which simply does not work. Not having breaking balance creates a lack of control, especially on slopes and curves, and in twenty eighteen a Cameroonian court found the company and multiple staff guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligence rail safety oversight, maintenance practices, and of course the responsibility of management also got scrutinized. Now we know the concrete physical causes, I mean everyone did, but there were some in the aftermath who found their explanation in the supernatural. About four and ten people around the world believe in some form of witchcraft or spells or curses that coexist with modern life, and Cameroon is exempt, and rumors started that the train was doomed or cursed before it even left. Catastrophic events are sometimes interpreted as intentional acts, not random failures, and those who believe worried that malevolent spiritual forces sabotaged the whole thing, specifically that the train had been bewitched or zombiefied into derailing. Don't take it serious, though. Turning to the metaphysical is at the root of it just grief trying to find an explanation to try to make sense of preventable death. When a disaster feels too large, or too sudden, or too unjust. People want to know who or what willed it to happen. Take my word for it, grief can do weird things to the mind. The rains and flooding and washout didn't directly murder anyone. The road failed, the population rerouted, the rail system was pushed beyond its limps. Decisions had to be made under pressure, and people died, and we call that a cascading infrastructure failure. Much like our recent Texas City episode, decisions were made with an incomplete understanding of the risks, and the final disaster was so much worse than the original threat. Cam Rail one point fifty two was not the biggest disaster in the history of the continent top ten certainly, But what made it so interesting. It wasn't its body count. It was the unique conditions and series of events unfolding exactly as needed to allow it to happen. It was unique in how clear and transparent it was as an example of how one system failed and overloaded another at any step along the way. This could have been avoided, but preserving the economy is often seen as the greater good, and that simply never happens without someone paying a price. The inciting incident hadn't killed anyone, but it set the stage for conditions that led to a far deadlier outcome. The Aseka disaster of twenty sixteen remains to this day one of the most significant and deadliest transportation events in the history of African rail disasters, and the deadliest rail disaster in the history of Cameroon. A little quick housekeeping, I wanted to shout out joy Smoku Konchu, who sent me my very first fan mail from Africa. That's a big deal for me. So yes, of course I'm doing her story and she's not just sitting there listening to this with a bag of popcorn. For Joyce, this episode would be personal. She lost a good friend during the Aseka train wreck, and she called it a careless disaster that could have been avoided by common sense, and she truly hoped that I would cover it. Well, here we are, Joyce, voila sam fe Pleazier. And to her point, common sense usually gets its teeth handed to it when it comes to matters of commerce. Give any government the option between shutting down the economy for a day or having thousands of people ropes swing across the Flaming River to work, and I promise you that rope would be proving itself. So joyce, thank you, And as promised, I also wanted to make an announcement and share a story about our logo. After all these years, it occurred to me that our grumpy gorilla friend has been enjoying his school bus sushi sampler on our logo without a name to call his own. So I held a little naming contest on Patreon. All I said was, there are few things as personally rewarding for me as meeting an animal with a perfectly mundane human name like Neil or Jeff with a G. And there's no offense to that intended of course. And now, without further ado, today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Todd, Yes, Todd the Gorilla. Good work everybody. You are all official godparents. I couldn't wait to introduce them to you, guys. But now that I am, I can tell you there is a very special story behind the name for one special listener. Now, what makes this special is that Todd's full legal name is Todd Dennis Kahm. And you might be asking Dennis Well. Shortly after I announced the contest, I had a conversation with a listener named Alex from Austria, and to say our conversation was deeply moving does a disservice to the words deeply and moving. Alex told me about her son, Dennis. Dennis was a smart and talented child, and he was loved by his family, but he was unable to escape a personal sadness that ultimately took his life. She said, he had his whole life in front of him, and it breaks her heart to know that he deserves people remembering him and not being forgotten like he never really mattered. And I agree. So I did three things. First, I told her that no matter what happened, I wanted Todd's middle name to be Dennis, and in this small way, in the legacy of the show, Dennis is amortalized and he lives on forever. Second, I told her that I wanted to know everything about him. One of the many sad things about losing a child is how little time and opportunity they had to create lasting memories in other people's lives. So I wanted him to live in my memory, but not just me. I'm just some guy who talks into a microphone and knows what it is to feel sad and will share a kindness whenever I can. And the kindness that I wanted to give Alex was sharing Dennis's memory with all of you. So in this way, he will live on forever in the memory of people around the world. And if it helps relieve even half a percent of her unfathomable grief, it is my privilege to do this. Dennis was the kind of kid who would hug his mother in front of his friends without embarrassment, and that tells me everything I need to know about him. And when she says that he was loved and loving, I believe it. He was the kind of boy who when he was growing up, he became fascinated by things like astronomy and numbers, and he loved music. He was one of those kind of auto Daidak kids who learned how to play multiple instruments. He loved crafts, and he loved the water, and whenever possible, whenever the family could travel and he had a chance to be near an ocean, he would welcome every New Year's by swimming in the sea. He was cheeky and bright and Alex said there was something extraordinary in their bond. They shared everything, and when one of them was hurt, the other tried to help carry that. I think it's important to say people are so much more than the worst moments in their life. Dennis was a wonderful person and the world is a lesser place without him. When I told Alex what I wanted to do, she told me she couldn't begin to put into words how much that would comfort her. Then we both cried. So I say, if you want to share a prayer, please do, And if you would care to share a message for Alex, please do. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast and my email is doomsday Pod at gmail dot com. Okay, if you are feeling punched, drunk with emotion and love painful segues, I ask, why not consider becoming a part of this whole ball of wax by becoming a supporting member at Patreon dot com, slash few, neuro. Kazoo, add free episodes, extra content, behind the scenes stuff, safety stuff, all of it yours for the taking, and a hell of a community to join. As I say, donations from people like you are the only reason that I have been able to do this show as often as I have. The majority of Patreon supporters sign up to make a small monthly donation to sustain the show they love, and then, just like N. Three, they just disappear. If you're too shy or overwhelmed for all that, but you do want to make a difference, you could always visit buy me a coffee dot com slash Doomsday and simply make a one time donation. And I just got a notification from them that now you can tip in crypto, so have at the It's at this point that I want to share a heartfelt shut out to William Patton, Blair Mischlu who actually works for Patreon. Thanks Blair, appreciate you, Jay Barnes, Amber Carr, and Michael Kalenda for helping support me on Patreon. I also wanted to thank Hydrocorvey and Carrie Ann for helping me with a little research in the background on this which does help keep things running smoothly. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave a review and tell your friends. I always thank all my supporters, new and old, for their support and encouragement, but if you you could spare the money and had to choose, I always ask you to consider making a donation to Global Menic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over six million people across eighty nine different countries. You can learn more and donate at Globalmedic dot Ca on the next episode. So it's World Cup time and we will be hosting some of the games here in Toronto, which should be exciting, especially once you see the overflow seating they slapped up that feels unnervingly tall and shakes around in the wind, and some of the support polls don't quite make it all the way to the unsettling as that is, as of the time of this recording, the stadium has not collapsed, so for soccer related mayhem, we are going to have to look elsewhere. For now. It's the Fury on a stadium disaster of nineteen ninety two. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off and thanks for listening,