68 Killed, 230 Hurt as Soviet Train Explodes : 600 Families Homeless After Blast at Railway Station Near Industrial City of Gorky, Tass Says

Three freight cars packed with explosives blew up at a railroad station 65 miles south of the industrial city of Gorky, killing at least 68 people and injuring 230 others, the Soviet government reported Sunday.

The explosion, which occurred Saturday morning at Arzamas, 250 miles east of Moscow, hurled the freight train, including the locomotive, high into the air. It gouged a crater 80 feet deep and 165 feet in diameter and destroyed or damaged more than 400 buildings.

The final death toll may be significantly higher, according to correspondents from Tass, the official government news agency. They reported from Arzamas that many of the injured were in critical condition in local hospitals. Eight children were reported among the dead.

Tass said that 600 families were left homeless by the blast and added that they would get new apartments and compensation for damages.

The rapidity and detail with which the explosion was reported by the official government news media reflected the current policy of glasnost, or political openness, which recognizes a basic “right to know” on the part of the people.

Until Mikhail S. Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, such accidents were rarely reported, largely out of fear that they would undermine public confidence in the government.

Gennady G. Vedernikov, a deputy premier sent to the scene to oversee rescue efforts as the head of a special 14-member commission, said that the force of the explosion “scattered (the victims) like feathers.”

Many of the victims were in vehicles waiting at a railroad crossing.

“We are taking measures to help all those who suffered from the accident,” Vedernikov told the government newspaper Izvestia.

Devastation Enormous

The scope of the devastation was enormous, even though it was confined largely to the area around the local railway station, Vedernikov said, sketching what appeared to be one of the country’s most serious industrial accidents on its transport system.

The three freight cars carrying the explosives had a total capacity of 120 tons. The immediate area around the railway station was virtually leveled, and shock waves from the blast heavily damaged buildings more than a mile away, according to Tass.

The area was evacuated, but the local population was quickly reassured that tests showed an “absence of hazardous components” in the atmosphere, Tass said.

The explosion set off small fires, derailed other freight cars and damaged the track, Izvestia reported later on Sunday. The fires were extinguished within a half hour, it said.

Tass said 20 teams of surgeons and assistants were flown in from Moscow, and other medical personnel were brought by helicopter from Gorky. Military units were also sent in to help, and a field hospital was set up. Numerous local residents rushed to the scene to donate blood.

‘City Remains Calm’

“Hospital personnel are doing their best to save the life of every person,” a Tass correspondent reported from Arzamas, recounting the dimensions of the disaster and the rescue effort. “Despite the wide scope of the tragedy, the situation in the city remains calm.”

The accident was not the worst on the Soviet railway system--106 people were killed in a two-train collision last August--but it again raised questions about the safety of Soviet air, land and sea transport, where Western visitors find safety precautions to be haphazard.

The cause of the Arzamas blast is not yet known, Vedernikov said, adding that the explosives were being shipped to industrial users, including mines, around the country.