Fatalities Bring Drive Warning of Deadly Nature of Trains

In the wake of the third fatal train accident in three weeks, transportation officials on Monday announced plans for a public-awareness campaign designed to remind San Diego County residents that, now more than ever, trains can kill.

Two people were killed Sunday night when they were hit by a train in Encinitas.

Jesus Garcia, district director of Caltrans, said his agency will meet with city and county officials to decide how best to update the often-outdated perceptions of railroad hazards.

“Most people are aware that a freeway is not a safe place to play, but for some reason they don’t understand that train tracks, in many cases, are even more deadly,” Garcia said in a statement. “We need to make them aware. Their lives could depend on it.”

The agency hopes to erase romantic visions of hobo-hauling freight trains ambling leisurely--and noisily--down the track. Howard Robertson, an Amtrak spokesman, said its trains--16 of which zip through San Diego County each day--are faster and quieter than ever. And as they have gained speed and lost decibels, partly as a result of newly installed quarter-mile strips of smooth, silent track, they also have grown more deadly.

“People like it (the improvements), but it’s creating a little bit more danger,” Robertson said. The trains “are on you before you even know it.”

Law enforcement officials said that is apparently what happened to a group of at least five people Sunday evening. About 7 o’clock, a southbound train appeared suddenly out of the darkness, moving at 87 m.p.h. along a section of track in Encinitas where the group had apparently gathered to drink beer.

Sheriff’s deputies said the locomotive’s engineer saw the group on the tracks and sounded his horn in warning, but he was unable to stop.

The bodies of Juan Carlos Ortega, 24, and Sandra Spires, 45, were found dozens of feet south of the point of impact. A third person, Eliseo Zarate, 30, was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla with fractured ribs, a broken collarbone and numerous cuts. Zarate was believed to have been struck by one of the two people hit by the train.

The accident brought the county’s train-related death toll to four this month. On Oct. 13, a 16-year-old girl was killed by an Amtrak train while she and two friends were walking along the railroad tracks near her parents’ home in Encinitas. On Oct. 4, a 22-year-old surfer was struck and killed while taking a shortcut along a train trestle to the beach in San Onofre.

Just the day before, a southbound Amtrak train hit an auto-transport truck that was stuck on the tracks in the Leucadia area of Encinitas. Six train passengers suffered minor injuries.