Udec Corporation

Historical Moment: The 1998 Yaoundé train explosion

A rail accident in Yaoundé, the capital of the central African state Cameroon, on February 14th, led to the catastrophic destruction of a tanker train hauling fuel where 120 were left dead and 150 seriously injured.

A train of oil tankers derailed when it was in collided with a train, also pulling oil tanker wagons, traveling in the opposite direction. Petroleum began to spill form the ruptured tankers.

A large number of local people and passing taxi drivers stopped to collect the fuel oil in containers, their clothes becoming saturated in the process. Petrol commands a premium in the country and it is common for the fuel to be sold from the side of the road, often in open containers.

The belief of what happened next is that one of the local people at the crash sight was smoking. When he stooped to collect some of the oil, he accidentally dropped the lit cigarette creating a flash fire. The fire traveled right back to the wrecked tankers, creating a massive fireball, killing almost all the people in the area, as well as flattening local slum housing and starting numerous smaller fires in the surrounding districts.

The emergency services arrived on the scene soon after the blaze started, but were held back by the force of the flames for a long time, which they were only able to contain, not extinguish. The fire burned for several hours. For days, a column of black smoke hung over the area of the blast.

The cause of the train collision is not known, but most assume it had something to do with poor equipment and maintenance on the rail system due to Cameroon’s prevalent corruption. Cameroon was labelled “most corrupt nation 1998″ by Transparency International- a leading international non-governmental organization addressing corruption.

Railway services to the south of the country were out of action for weeks, dealing yet another blow to Cameroon’s oil industry.

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