Train Engineer, Buried for 8 Hours, Is Rescued : Accident: U.S. Gypsum says locomotive went into Ocotillo Wells loading shed the wrong way, causing ore to fall on it.

An injured engineer was rescued Tuesday after being trapped for eight hours in a locomotive covered with tons of gypsum at a quarry in eastern San Diego County.

Leroy Witherspoon, 34, remained alert throughout the ordeal, which began shortly before 3 a.m. when the locomotive he was driving into a tunnel-like loading shed hit the bottom of a hopper, sending its contents raining down.

Matt Gonring, spokesman for the Chicago-based U.S. Gypsum Co., for which Witherspoon has worked for 14 years, said the locomotive is “never meant to enter the tunnel cab-first--it’s meant to be backed in, and for some unknown reason, he did it backwards.”

Gonring said the cab of the locomotive is considerably higher than the top of the tunnel, so when Witherspoon took the locomotive in “cab-first, the top of the cab was sheared off, and the chutes underneath the hopper opened up above him.”

Witherspoon, who lives in El Centro, lay sealed in the locomotive, buried beneath 200 tons of gypsum. Rescue crews headed by the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department managed to free him shortly before 11 a.m.

The Montrose Search and Rescue Team, made up of reserve deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, was also called to assist, arriving at the quarry, 70 miles east of downtown San Diego, before dawn. The six-member team is one of five squads in California that specialize in mine and cave-in rescues.

By late Tuesday, Witherspoon was listed in fair condition at Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Brawley with a broken foot that required surgery. He also badly bruised a shoulder, but should be released in a few days, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday night.

A brakeman riding the locomotive when the accident occurred escaped, sheriff’s deputies said. Emanuel Castillo, 29, of Calexico was treated at the hospital for cuts and shock and released, the spokeswoman said.

Deputies said they were summoned to the scene about 2:50 a.m., at which point they began communicating with Witherspoon by radio. They worked for hours to shore up rock around the locomotive to prevent further erosion of the gypsum. They said Witherspoon never had trouble breathing.

Gonring said that “after safety considerations are satisfied--our employees’ safety matters most”--a full investigation will ensue, focusing on why the locomotive went in cab-first.

Imperial County sheriff’s deputies said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and U.S. Bureau of Mines will also investigate the accident.

Witherspoon “was coming to an area near the quarry,” Gonring said. “Typically, it’s not intended for the locomotive to enter the tunnel. Whether it was mechanical failure or human error, we just don’t know. But clearly, the loading facility is not intended for the locomotive.”

Said Lt. Ken Koon of the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department: “The locomotive ran into the doors of the loading chute and the ore just came down on top of him.”

Gonring said U.S. Gypsum is a Fortune 250 company and the largest manufacturer of gypsum wallboard building products. Gypsum is a soft material used as a key ingredient in the manufacture of plaster and drywall.

The material is gathered in a mine south of Ocotillo Wells, then transported by rail on one of the few narrow-gauge tracks left in North America, to the Imperial County town of Plaster City, 35 miles away, Gonring said.

Gonring said the company had never suffered such an accident since the quarry’s opening in the 1940s. Sheriff’s deputies and townspeople said the company had enjoyed, in the words of one deputy, “a remarkably good safety record. That’s why we’re surprised this happened.”

Gonring said the ore is blasted in quarries, then loaded onto trucks that drive into the shed. There, he said, it is unloaded into large bins, or hoppers, that are dispatched through chutes into the rail cars underneath the rock shed.

“The locomotive backs these cars into a tunnel underneath the rock shed, where the chutes open up,” Gonring said. “The rock falls into the rail cars, for delivery to Plaster City. But for whatever reason, the locomotive headed into the tunnel cab-first, which it’s never meant to do.”

Gonring said some of the rock toppled onto Witherspoon, although most of it came to rest on the cab, making it impossible for him to move.

He said workers sealed off the chutes, removed rock and debris from around the locomotive, then freed him as soon as they could.

Gonring said Witherspoon and Castillo, the brakeman who managed to escape, suffered “shock more than anything.”

Witherspoon will remain in the Brawley hospital for several days for observation, the spokeswoman said, adding that he broke several bones in the top of his right foot and badly bruised a shoulder, but “that should heal quite well in time.”

Times photographer Dave Gatley contributed to this story.