Iran Train Explosion

On February 18 2004 Iran suffered another tragic day, when a train exploded, killing about 300 people, and injuring many more. At about 4:00 am, a train sitting on a siding, loaded with chemicals, began rolling by itself. It had no engine, and the speculation was that high winds pushed it into motion. It rolled about 10 km to a village called Neyshabur, and then derailed, setting some of the cars on fire. Officials and firemen were on the scene working to put out the fire when it suddenly erupted in a gigantic explosion, which broke windows miles away and registered over 3 on the seismic Richter scale. Most of the people in the vicinity were killed, including the mayor and regional governor, as well as many emergency and medical personnel. The explosion was at 09:37 local (06:07 GMT).

The formal prediction was set for 4:00 am to 2:00 pm local (00:30 to 10:30 GMT). Chisquare was 36261 on 36000 df, with p = 0.165. The first figure shows this formal analysis, with the graph covering the period from 4:00 am to 14:00, local time. Following it is an exploratory analysis that plots the variance deviation during the same period of time. Both figures have interesting, strong deviations in the early part of the day, especially around 6:30 to 9:00, during the time the fire and emergency personnel were focusing their efforts to control the fires.

Iran Train Explosion

Iran Train Explosion


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