Train Slams Into Big Rig, Killing Driver

The driver of a tractor-trailer died and a farm worker was seriously injured Saturday when a Seattle-bound Amtrak passenger train rammed into the bed of the big rig at an unguarded railroad crossing.

The 11:37 a.m. crash, east of Hitch Boulevard at California 118, sparked a blaze that skittered onto the freeway in an agricultural area of Moorpark, but firefighters quickly contained it. The collision also closed the freeway between Somis and Tierra Rejada roads for five hours.

The train’s 390 passengers and crew members waited in the scorching heat for four hours before they were picked up and rerouted to San Luis Obispo, where they were to board another train for the Pacific Northwest, an Amtrak spokesman said.

None of the passengers were injured in the crash, but one man was taken to a hospital with a preexisting stomach problem.

The big-rig driver, 31-year-old Rodney Allen McCarty of El Rio, died in the crash, paramedics said.

“He [McCarty] was gone in one second,” said 14-year-old Amtrak passenger Laura Storey of Titusville, Fla., who had been visiting her aunt and uncle in Thousand Oaks. “It was like a finger snap. I’m just devastated.”

The accident shook up residents in the west end of Moorpark, an area of farms and avocado orchards.

“It was amazing, a little bit scary,” said Moorpark resident Susan St. John, who lives in the nearby Home Acres neighborhood and saw the wreckage and fire.

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McCarty was turning north from the freeway across the train tracks to deliver a bulldozer to a farm when he was struck, said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman John Foy. The crossing to a private farm was not guarded by a bar or light, but was marked by a stop sign and a sign that said railroad crossing.

The crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and Amtrak, but Ventura County Fire Capt. Mike Sidlinger said the lack of crossing arms probably contributed to the accident.

“There’s no warning devices, so when you cross the tracks, you’re on your own,” he said.

Reached at McCarty & Sons Towing in Oxnard, the driver’s family declined comment.

The injured man’s brother identified him as Moorpark resident Jose Antonio Aguirre, a 28-year-old father of two. Aguirre, who was repairing a small plank bridge over a drainage channel, was struck by debris from the big rig that also damaged a pickup truck.

Paramedics took Aguirre to Los Robles Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, where he was in serious condition with chest and rib injuries late Saturday.

Aguirre’s brother, 30-year-old Vicente Aguirre, was at work with Jose at Muranaka Farms when the accident occurred. The two are ranch mechanics and do general labor, but work in different areas of the farm.

Vicente Aguirre said he barely heard the collision, but turned to see a thick plume of smoke rising near the railroad tracks about a mile and a half away. He jumped into a pickup truck and arrived to see his brother being treated by paramedics.

“The way he looked, lying there on the ground, I thought he could be dead,” the elder Aguirre said in Spanish. “The accident was very ugly. He was very scared.”

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Vicente Aguirre said his brother was born in Guanjuato, Mexico, and came to the United States more than a decade ago. He was the first in his family to trek north in search of a better life.

Vicente Aguirre said he joined his brother about 10 years ago, and shares a house in Moorpark with Jose, his wife and two children, 3-year-old Jamie and 6-month-old Isaac.

The elder Aguirre said he didn’t have the heart Saturday to tell Jose’s wife all he knew about the accident.

“I didn’t want to tell her the truth, she would have only become very nervous,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that is no one’s fault, it’s just very bad luck.”

The force of the crash wrapped the rig’s bed around the front of the train, which dragged the tractor-trailer 1,000 feet. The damaged pickup truck lay to the south of the tracks, which parallel the freeway, while the big rig’s cab was tossed to the north.

The accident is not the first involving trains and automobiles in the Moorpark area, which has both guarded and unguarded train crossings.

* In 1994, two fatal accidents occurred within a week at a guarded crossing west of Moorpark, killing three. That same year, the crossing at California 118 west of Grimes Canyon Road was listed as the state’s 37th most dangerous, according to the Public Utilities Commission.

* Two years earlier, at an unguarded crossing, three men were killed when their vehicle stopped for unknown reasons at a railroad crossing west of Moorpark near Balcom Canyon Road.

City Councilman John Wozniak decried the lack of protection for people who cross the tracks.

“We’ve had quite a few accidents on those crossings,” he said Saturday. “Makes you wonder whether we should have unprotected crossings. . . . You end up with so many blind crossings at train tracks, where you can’t see far. A train going 65 miles per hour can come out of nowhere real quick.”

Staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this report.