Search for Clues Begin in Fatal Train Wreck

By late Tuesday, at least 13 passengers from Amtrak’s City of New Orleans were dead, and emergency crews had spray-painted most of the twisted, burned out train cars with a single somber word: “Empty.”

But with four passengers still unaccounted for, grim-faced searchers with little hope took their dogs and combed the deformed hulks of cars not yet marked. Amtrak estimated that 217 passengers were aboard the train.

“To find survivors in that wreckage would be pretty unlikely,” Bourbonnais Fire Chief Mike Harshbarger said softly. “But we’re going to try.”

The total cost of Monday night’s crash in lives and injuries was still unclear, buried in hundreds of tons of charred steel. But the wreck was one of the worst in U.S. history. More than 116 passengers were taken to local hospitals, with at least 10 in critical condition and a dozen listed as serious.

The injuries ranged from cuts, bruises and broken bones to severe head injuries. Rescue workers had to amputate the mutilated foot of one young boy to free him from the wreckage, authorities said.

“The scene is the same” after all train wrecks, said a shaken John Goglia of the National Transportation Safety Board. “It’s painful.”

Bound for New Orleans, the train rammed into a tractor-trailer truck loaded with steel reinforcement bars about 9:40 p.m. Monday, about 50 miles south of Chicago. The first of two locomotives was all but demolished on impact, although the engineer survived. The second locomotive and 11 of the 14 passenger, baggage and dining cars tumbled and careened into a fiery heap a hundred yards from the steel mill from which the truck had just departed. The truck driver was not injured.

“I was trying to go to sleep, then all of a sudden everything just started crashing and catching on fire, and people were hollering and running,” said Blanche Jones of Memphis, Tenn., as she limped away from a school that served as a shelter for the less injured. “We were trying to get out. We couldn’t get out, couldn’t find a way out.”

“It was so crowded, people were running into each other,” said one passenger at St. Mary’s Medical Center in nearby Kankakee before going to check on his seriously injured grandfather in another room.

“It makes you so aware of how short life is and how quickly it can be gone,” said Christina Bomgaars, 15, one of 15 Mississippi teens returning from a Canadian ski trip.

“You don’t have to do anything. You just have to be in the wrong place. God was watching over us.”

The teens escaped the wreck with only cuts and bruises.

Hundreds of emergency workers were summoned in the minutes after the crash, some from as far as 80 miles away.

Rescue helicopters landed in the stubble of a nearby cornfield. The emergency room staff at St. Mary’s grew from 10 to 150 in a half hour.

Residents of this rural farm town who heard the roaring crash or saw the flames rushed to drag dazed passengers away from the diesel-laden locomotives and into a muddy field nearby. Darren Saathoff, 18, helped one hysterical woman search for her three girls, who had gone to the forward-most passenger car to play with friends. He later watched as several small bodies were carried from the car.

An Exhaustive Inquiry Begins

Dozens of investigators from Amtrak, the NTSB and other agencies began their work in the wee hours Tuesday, even as the wreckage smoldered and firefighters hosed down the cars before entering to search for the dead and injured.

The inquiry will be exhaustive, Goglia promised: “We will go through the timing down to the nanosecond.”

What was clear late Tuesday, investigators said, was that John R. Stokes, 58, of nearby Manteno, edged his loaded truck over the tracks at a two-lane access road just north of the Birmingham Steel Co. as the southbound train approached. What was unclear was why.

The train smashed into the truck’s trailer, leaving the cab and Stokes unscathed.

Goglia said the locomotive’s “black box” which like that on an airliner records speed and other details of the train’s performance, revealed that the train was going 79 mph, the maximum speed allowed on the line, and that the engineer blew the whistle before the train hit the truck.

A trigger device located north of the crossing is designed to trip the red warning lights and bells and lower the safety arms on either side of the tracks 26 seconds before a train traveling at 79 mph arrives.

“We will run the signals and make sure they were working properly,” Goglia said.

The gates did not appear to have been damaged, and the red lights flashed eerily throughout the day. Bourbonnais Police Chief Joseph Beard said it appeared the gates were at least partially lowered at the time of the accident.

Investigators interviewed Stokes and drew blood samples for alcohol and drug testing. They plan to interview him again.

Stokes told authorities he didn’t see the train or flashing lights until he had already begun crossing the tracks, said NTSB safety engineer Cy Gura.

“He’s very sad and upset,” Gura said. “He felt he did whatever . . . he could do to clear the train track.”

Stokes had his driver’s license suspended earlier this year after state officials learned he had been cited for speeding three times in Indiana in less that a year. He was allowed to continue driving on a provisional permit, law enforcement officials said, because he was a first-time offender, had taken a safety course and had paid a fine.

Officials also planned to investigate two other train cars that had been parked alongside the railroad tracks. When the Amtrak train derailed, some of the skidding cars plowed into the stationary cars, at least one of which was loaded with steel. Those collisions may have contributed to the severity of the crash, Goglia said.

Accidents at Train Crossings Frequent

Nationwide, accidents at train crossings happen about every 90 minutes--a statistic that can be blamed in large part on decades-old warning technology, according to RailWatch, a nonprofit railway safety organization. The deadliest train wreck in Amtrak’s 27-year history occurred in 1993, when a tugboat smashed into a bridge near Mobile, Ala., just as a train was crossing the river. The bridge collapsed, sending passenger cars plunging into the river and killing 47 people. The worst train wreck in the U.S. took place in 1918, when 101 people died after two trains collided near Nashville.

The original City of New Orleans train was operated by Illinois Central, which still has responsibility for the tracks. When Amtrak took over the local passenger service in 1971, it stuck with the name Panama Limited, another Illinois Central train. But a decade later Amtrak decided to capitalize on a tune called “City of New Orleans,” made popular by folk singer Arlo Guthrie, and changed the name back.

Tuesday, the famed train was barely recognizable as a train at all. And locals gathered behind the Bakery Thrift Shop--known for its low-priced Twinkies and day-old Wonder Bread--staring in disbelief.

“It’s amazing anybody at all walked out,” said Brenda Smith.

“Unreal,” added Judy Zimmerman, clutching a disposable camera. “I came out last night but couldn’t see anything because of the smoke. Now look at it. Just unreal.”

Researcher John Beckham contributed to this story.

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How It Happened

Amtrak’s City of New Orleans train, bound for New Orleans from Chicago, derailed Monday night after it slammed into a tractor-trailer truck. All the dead were aboard one sleeper car that was set afire by leaking diesel fuel.

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Other recent deadly U.S. railroad accidents:

Feb., 16, 1996: Amtrak’s Capitol Limited, and an MARC Maryland commuter train collided in Silver Spring, Md., killing all three crew members and eight passengers.

Sept. 22, 1993: Amtrak’s Sunset Limited plunged into a bayou near Mobile, Ala., killing 47 people.

Jan. 4, 1987: An engineer drove three Conrail engines through a closed track switch and into the path of an Amtrak train near Chase, Md., killing 16 people and injuring 175.

Sources: Times staff, wire reports