3 of 4 Train Crash Victims Died in Flames After Leaping

Three of the four Santa Fe railway workers killed in a crash here, including a woman brake operator working her first shift ever, burned to death after jumping from their locomotive just before it rammed an oncoming freight train, officials said Thursday.

“The indications to me are that they had gotten out and then the explosion occurred,” said Deputy Riverside County Coroner Alan Wesefeldt.

Officials believe that the Wednesday morning accident occurred because the 6,094-foot, westbound train, for reasons that remain under investigation, failed to fully stop within an 8,370-foot-long sidetrack and veered into the oncoming, Chicago-bound freight.

Representatives of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. on Thursday confirmed the identities of all four workers who were killed. On the westbound, they were brake operator Virginia C. Hartzell, 29, of Baldwin Park; engineer Gary R. Ledoux, 35, of Highland; and conductor James S. Wakefield, 55, of Fontana.

The one crew member killed on the Chicago-bound freight was brakeman Ronald A. Westervelt, 52, of San Bernardino. Westervelt, whose body was found aboard his locomotive, died of head injuries and burns, according to Wesefeldt.

Westervelt’s two surviving colleagues on the eastbound, engineer James Dawson, 50, and conductor Warren Sanders, 51, remained hospitalized at separate Riverside County hospitals with various broken bones and cuts. A nursing supervisor described Dawson’s condition as serious; Sanders was listed in fair condition.

With the exception of Hartzell, each of the dead had extensive railway experience, according to Linda L. Gustis, a spokeswoman for Santa Fe in Chicago. Hartzell, officials said, was making her very first run when her 8,700-ton, Los Angeles-bound freight departed the Mo jave Desert town of Barstow at 10:15 p.m. on Tuesday.

Tragedy struck 5 hours, 55 minutes later, in Corona, 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

“It is my understanding that this was her first run,” said Brent Bahler, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, at the crash scene. Hartzell had worked nine years for Santa Fe in other, non-operational jobs, according to Gustis.

Bahler and other officials said that no conclusions had been reached regarding the cause of the accident and that the investigation would last months. Bahler also said late Thursday that investigators were still waiting to interview the crash survivors from the eastbound freight.

At a press conference in Corona late Thursday night, sketchy details about the crash were released.

James Kolstad, chairman of the NTSB, said the westbound train entered the passing track at 15 m.p.h. and began to slow about 1,500 feet before the crossing.

At that time, Kolstad said, the train had been in “dynamic braking” in which the diesel electric power in the train was geared to resist forward movement.

The train then went into emergency braking about 60 to 80 feet before the crossing, Kolstad said. He said the investigation will attempt to determine whether this was adequate space in which to brake.

“So far we don’t have any evidence to support a signal malfunction,” he said.

Kolstad added that Hartzell’s inexperience was irrelevant because her duties did not actually require that she be in charge of braking the train. Her duties were to operate manual switches when the train stopped and monitor the placement of cars and locomotives.

“This was not a movement that required her responsibilities to be performed,” Kolstad said.

He said that over the weekend, investigators will examine training records, equipment maintenance records and perform sight-distance tests to determine what could have been seen at night.

By midday Thursday, amid the faint but lingering smell of diesel fuel, workers had cleared much of the wreckage, using cranes to load the derailed locomotives onto flat cars.

Hours earlier, at about 2 a.m., the Southern California Gas Co. sealed off five miles of an underground pipeline, a portion of which is 7 feet beneath where one of the displaced locomotives came to rest. Gas company spokesman Ralph A. Cohen said the 30-inch line appears unscathed and stable but was closed at the request of the California Public Utilities Commission, as a precaution. An adjacent, 16-inch pipe, carrying crude oil, also has been sealed.

The danger of fire is felt particularly in the area because six people were killed in nearby San Bernardino last year when a pipeline bearing jet fuel exploded in flames 13 days after it had been damaged by another train derailment.