Story Photos
 Photo by Roger Werth A worker from Cowlitz Clean Sweep in Longview pulls one end of a 400-foot-long suction hose Monday. The hose will remove diesel fuel spilled Saturday when two trains collided south of Kelso. |
Crash investigators focus on human error
Tuesday, November 18, 2003 8:32 AM PST
By Tony Lystra
Printable version
E-mail this articleInvestigators are focusing on human error as a factor Saturday's collision of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train and a Union Pacific train south of Kelso, which injured two crewmen, a National Transportation Safety Board official said Monday.
"We're very closely examining the activities of the train crews, particularly the U.P. crew just prior to the impact," said Jim Southworth, who is leading the investigation for the NTSB. The two injured men were on the Union Pacific train.
Work crews, meanwhile, opened both sets of tracks where the crash occurred. Amtrak and freight trains were moving through the stretch again by 11:45 p.m. Sunday, a BNSF spokesman said.
Southworth said a team of investigators has not yet determined the cause of the wreck. Initial findings show that the tracks and train traffic signals along the stretch appear to have been working correctly. The brakes and other equipment on both trains were functioning normally as well, he said.
"We're still looking at everything else, but we're looking at (human error) a little harder," Southworth said. "One of the things that we focus on is the human performance aspect, particularly when we've got signal systems that don't show any anomalies."
The crash happened on a two-track stretch parallel to Interstate 5 near mile post 35, the same location where a head-on collision between a U.P. and BNSF train killed five veteran railroaders on Nov. 11, 1993.
At around 8 a.m. on Saturday, the two freight trains, a loaded northbound Burlington Northern train and an empty southbound Union Pacific train, were headed toward each other on the same track, track two, near Carrolls Bluff in Kelso. The BNSF train, officials said, had been using track two to go around freight cars that were being stored on the tracks.
The crew aboard the BNSF train had just begun to merge onto track one when the U.P. train smashed into it, derailing the locomotives and casting cars into the woods.
Shortly before the crash, the engineer aboard the BNSF train noticed that the UP locomotive was "going too fast" and "was going to hit his train," Southworth said. The BNSF crew then locked up the train's brakes, he said.
The impact was so intense, Southworth said, that it appears to have catapulted an empty U.P. car over the top of the BNSF train.
The empty U.P. train, which was headed from Gillian, Ore., to Seattle, was 90 cars long and weighted 6.2 million pounds, Southworth said. It was traveling at around 49 mph when it struck the BNSF train. The loaded BNSF freight train, which was traveling from Interbay, Wash., to Roosevelt, Wash., was 32 cars long and weighed 5.2 million pounds. It had slowed to 31 mph when it was hit.
It was still unclear Monday how many of the cars derailed, but initial reports showed that at least 20 of them had been knocked off the tracks.
On Monday morning, investigators used locomotives to travel the rails that lead to the crash site in a sort of re-enactment of the collision. The idea, Southworth said, is to determine where train crews can first see the traffic signals that line the tracks. Southworth said that investigators also plan to pore over data from the trains' event recorders, or "black boxes," as well as similar devices attached to traffic signals.
Southworth, who said he has already interviewed the BNSF crew, also hopes to conduct similar interviews with the injured U.P. crew. The two men on the U.P. train were taken to area hospitals with serious, non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.
U.P. Engineer Steven Schaben, 60, of Seattle, was discharged from St. John Medical Center in Longview Monday, a spokeswoman said. Conductor R.D. Calhun, 60, of Portland, was taken to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. No information was available about his condition.
Work crews, meanwhile, continued Monday to haul debris away from the crash site. And environmental crews used hoses to clean up 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled from the locomotives' ruptured tanks.
Sandy Howard, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Ecology, said the diesel does not appear to have seeped into nearby wetlands or rivers. Environmental crews dug a trench along the interstate, she said, and used a vacuum truck to suck diesel out of the groundwater.
In addition, the BNSF train had been hauling garbage, including contaminated dredge spoils from a Superfund site near the Dwamish River in South Seattle. The federal Superfund program helps clean up industrial waste sites.
Some of the spoils spilled near the tracks, but Howard said that the material is not considered hazardous waste and will be hauled away shortly.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said that although the tracks are clear, it will take a month to haul away all of the debris.
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