A 48-car train stopped in a station broke free of its locomotive around 4 am. The convoy contained: 17 railcars carrying sulphur, 6 with gasoline, 7 with fertiliser, and 10 with cotton. The train overturned a bit further down the track and caught fire. At 9:37 am, as emergency responders considered the blaze to be under control, an explosion evaluated at 180 t of TNT equivalent and heard 75 km away formed a crater 20-25 m deep and 150 m in diameter. At the same time, the Teheran Geophysical Institute recorded an earthquake measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, yet the two events would not have been directly related. The toll was tremendous: 289 deaths, including 150 civil servants, fire-fighters, rail workers and police officers, with the other 139 fatalities being village residents and bystanders, plus another 460 injured. The 2 villages of Hachémabad and Dehno were totally destroyed and 4 neighbouring municipalities sustained considerable damage. According to the Transport Ministry, this accident would have been caused by human error committed in the station and, perhaps, an act of sabotage (with disastrous consequences) perpetrated by a disgruntled employee.