Story Photos
 Photo by Dave Rubert Railroad employees working around the clock through driving rain Sunday clear debris left in the wake of Saturday's train collision south of the Longview Wye. Officials expect both sets of tracks to reopen today. |
Crews rush to reopen tracks
Monday, November 17, 2003 8:22 AM PST
By Lisa Curdy
Printable version
E-mail this articleLow mechanical rumbles and metallic clanks drowned out the noise of Interstate 5 traffic as giant excavators and cranes began hefting away remnants of Saturday morning's two-train collision in Kelso near Carrolls Bluff. At least 20 cars were derailed over a span of about 6,300 feet, or 21 football fields.
Amid torrential downpours, 50-plus people were working around the clock to repair the two damaged lines, Gus Melonas, spokesman for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway, said Sunday from Seattle. BNSF owns the two damaged tracks.
Both tracks should be open sometime today, he said.
Just before 8 a.m. Saturday, a BNSF train was southound on track one, the one closest to I-5, so it could bypass freight cars that were parked on adjoining track two. At the same time, a Union Pacific train was also northbound on track one. This meant that both trains were headed toward one another on track one.
The southbound BNSF train started to switch back to track 2, the one closest to the Columbia River . But just after the BNSF train started to make the switch, the UP train smashed into it, Dave Watson, a senior accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a press briefing late Saturday night.
The UP train hit the the first fifth of the BNSF train, Watson said.
NTSB investigators declined to speculate why the trains collided and said an investigation might take up to a year. Several other parties will join the probe, including the two railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the United Transportation Union.
In addition to reviewing toxicology tests administered to both engine crews, NTSB officials also will test the track's signals, inspect both trains' mechanics and check the information inside six event recorders -- the locomotive equivalent to a commercial airliner's black box.
A UP conductor and engineer were injured and trapped in the wreck. It took crews from several local fire departments nearly two hours to free both men.
Engineer Steven Schaben, 60, of Seattle, remained in satisfactory condition at St. John Medical Center, a nursing supervisor said Sunday afternoon.
Conductor R.D. Calhun, 60, of Portland, was taken to Oregon Health & Science University in serious condition, a St. John nursing supervisor said Saturday. His condition was not available Sunday.
Neither of the two people aboard the BNSF train was injured.
Sunday morning, one of the two damaged tracks opened for two Amtrak runs and several freight trains, Melonas said, adding six other Amtrak trains were busing passengers between Seattle and Portland.
Workers shut that line down again Sunday afternoon so machinery could begin repairing the second track, but the track was expected to reopen again late Sunday evening, he said.
"There's a pile of cars on he adjacent track still, and work to do," Melonas said.
Hundreds of feet of damaged track are being repaired with 39-foot temporary prefabricated track panels that "comply with all requirements," he said.
Just how much track was damaged or the cost or repairs "is impossible at this point" to estimate, Melonas said.
The UP train consisted of three locomotives pulling 90 cars --- 60 carrying garbage and 30 empties --- as it traveled from Gillian, Ore., to Seattle on one of the company's 17 daily trips along those tracks. Its crew boarded in Portland at 1 a.m. Saturday, according to the NTSB.
On the BNSF train, which was on its way from Interbay, Wash., to Roosevelt, Wash., three locomotives were pulling 32 containers of garbage. Eighteen cars carried dredge spoils from a Superfund site at the Duwamish River in South Seattle. Superfund is a federal program that helps target and clean up industrial waste sites.
Three of those cars spilled polluted spoils onto the tracks. The material will be cleaned up, but it's not considered hazardous waste, said Sandy Howard, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.
Cowlitz Clean Sweep, a Longview-based ecological cleanup company, has been hired to clean up a 4,000-gallon to 6,000-gallon diesel spill. The fuel leaked into the ground from the trains' fuel tanks.
A ditch the length of a football field and as deep as the water table will be dug so the petroleum can be captured and disposed of, Howard said.
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