Metrolink spokeswoman formed a human link

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Metrolink passengers Brad Runkle of Simi Valley and Lexi Bagheri of West Hills hug aboard train 111 as it resumes evening service. It was the first time they had seen each other since the day before the deadly Metrolink crash. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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Metrolink’s first train 111 to return to service since the deadly crash arrives at the Simi Valley station. (Annie Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

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Metrolink’s train 111 crosses Chatsworth Street just before the site where at least 25 people were killed and 135 were injured in a head-on collision with a Union Pacific freight train. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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A Metrolink train and a freight train are used to reenact Friday’s deadly collision. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were doing a “site distance survey” to determine at what point the engineers on the ill-fated trains first saw each other. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Sonja Salinas brings flowers close to the site of the crash between a Metrolink train and a freight train in Chatsworth. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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MTA bus driver Humberto Munguia stops to say a prayer at a memorial to victims of Friday’s crash. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Diane Fowler of Filmore reads in the morning sunlight as she rides the 7 a.m. bus from the Metrolink station in Moorpark to the Chatsworth station to catch a train for the rest of the trip to Los Angeles. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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At the Metrolink station in Moorpark at 5 a.m., passengers board the bus bound for the Chatsworth station, where they will catch a train headed toward Union Station. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Denise Horton of Moorpark blows a kiss at a makeshift memorial at the Metrolink station there. Horton said she rode the train to work for eight years, sitting next to Alan Buckley, who died in the crash. “It will be hard for people to not see the same people,” she said. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, greeting passenger Frank Burcelis of Moorpark, was on hand Monday morning to reassure Metrolink riders in Chatsworth. I want to dispel any fears about taking the train, he said. Safety has to be our No. 1 concern. Taking the train is still the safest option for commuters. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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John Luder of Moorpark relaxes while riding the Metrolink train from the Chatsworth station to downtown Los Angeles. Luder said that he normally rides the Metrolink 111 line, which crashed on Friday, but he drove instead because he needed to go to Santa Monica after work to get pipe tobacco. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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Brian Buss, 31, of Westlake Village was among those at the Chatsworth train station who signed a get-well card for Bob Hildebrand, the conductor in the rear car of Metrolink 111. Hildebrand was hurt in the crash. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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All remnants of Metrolink 111 and a Union Pacific freighter have been removed from the route where the trains collided Friday. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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A railway worker stands at the track switch that Metrolink 111 “blew through,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board official, before colliding with a freight train. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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The Monday after the fatal Metrolink commuter train crash in Chatsworth, Isaac Sorenson catches an early morning train from Union Station to his job in Glendale. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

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Irene Mondoza, right, hugs her friend Julia Ledesma as they meet at Union Station after riding a Metrolink commuter train. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

By Sandy BanksColumnist

Sept. 16, 2008 8:49 AM PT

Somehow, her tears made me feel better.

Sitting at my desk - glued to televised accounts of the Metrolink crash, amidst the hubbub of a newsroom scrambling to cover the disaster - watching Denise Tyrrell lose her composure was painful. And illuminating.

The image said as much about the magnitude of the crash as those horrific scenes of the train’s smoking hulk, the brigades of firefighters and the sheet-covered bodies of passengers.

The head-on collision wasn’t just big news, with spectacular photo footage. It was a human tragedy, with ripples that would touch hundreds of families, thousands of lives - survivors; families and friends of those who died.

And it would touch us, as well.

On Friday, a few hours after the accident, I watched Tyrrell stumble through the official account before dozens of reporters and TV cameras - drawing her hand to her mouth in horror, and squeezing her eyes shut to hold back tears. And I found myself crying with her. By the next day, though, I’d willed myself numb.

Tyrrell didn’t have that luxury. The spokeswoman for Metrolink, she was on the scene until 3 a.m. Saturday, monitoring the rescue and investigation.

And that afternoon at a press conference, she answered the question on everyone’s mind, in the only way her conscience would allow: The apparent cause of the crash was human error.

By Monday, Tyrrell was the former spokeswoman for Metrolink.

Did Tyrrell overstep her bounds? You can read our story today and decide.

She could have taken a safer route - stonewalled and deferred to the National Transportation Safety Board, which has its own investigation. She probably would have kept her job. But would she be able to sleep at night?

It’s clear Tyrrell knew she was stepping out on a limb when she blamed the crash on a Metrolink engineer who failed to stop at a red light warning.

“Her hands were shaking,” said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “She asked me to stand with her when she made the statement.”

I wasn’t surprised to see Whitmore next to her. His boss, Sheriff Lee Baca, went against the grain three years ago by quickly shouldering the blame when deputies shot up a residential neighborhood in Compton. “I don’t need an investigation to tell me too many shots were fired,” he said then.

But I was surprised to see Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa out of camera range, off to the side during Tyrrell’s press conference. The mayor is anything but camera shy; it’s easy to recognize politics.

It’s not clear yet whether Tyrrell will be the hero or the goat when the dust clears. Was her candor a rush to judgment, or a way to jumpstart the healing process? Were her tears a sign she was out of control, or a reflection of raw feelings all around?

“She was emotional,” Whitmore said, “as were many firefighters, as were many police officers. ..... I have the strongest empathy and support for that young lady. Her courage is remarkable.”

I’m not prepared to call Tyrrell a hero. She struck a blow for decency. But the heroes are the rescue workers, the local residents who rallied to help, the hospital teams who treated the wounded.

And she doesn’t want us to consider her a victim. “Those people on that train and their families are the victims,” Tyrrell told me in an e-mail Monday night. “I’m going through stress. They are going through tragedy.”

She was our first link to that tragedy. And her tears confirmed for me our shared humanity.

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Metrolink spokeswoman formed a human link

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