19 Hurt as 2 Trains Collide

A Metrolink train smacked into the tail end of a freight train in Fullerton early Thursday, leaving 19 people injured and shutting down a main rail artery between Los Angeles and Santa Ana, frustrating thousands of commuters and other travelers whose trips were delayed, rerouted or canceled.

“I thought I was going to die,” said Lamont Hawkins, 41, of Long Beach, who was on his way to a Santa Ana interview for a job as a security guard. “Everybody was screaming. I was screaming. It was sick--something out of a horror movie. I’ve never been that scared in my life. . . . Thank God nobody was killed.”

The worst injury suffered in the collision--the first train-on-train accident in Orange County in a decade--was a broken arm, officials said.

The crash of the L.A.-to-Oceanside commuter train sparked fires in the Metrolink engine car and on several overturned freight cars, while passengers dashed out of the train’s doors and scrambled through windows. Thick smoke and reports of a possible toxic spill had emergency response crews girding for the worst. But the fires quickly were extinguished and the feared hazardous spill proved to be ordinary combustible materials.

Because the accident occurred about 8:15 a.m.--past the peak of the morning rush hour and involved a commuter train moving in the opposite direction from most morning traffic--relatively few passengers were affected, Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo said. The afternoon rush hour was a different story: At least 3,500 Metrolink and Amtrak passengers returning south from Los Angeles had their trains diverted through San Bernardino and Riverside to avoid closed sections of track. Some also were ferried by bus to their stations of origin.

“For a bad situation, this was as good as it gets,” Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Klein said.

Thursday’s crash occurred along one of the busiest train junctions in the region, where freight traffic, two Metrolink lines and Amtrak service converge. Tracks were expected to be cleared by early today, and morning commuter trains were expected to run on schedule, Metrolink and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway officials said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear what caused the collision of the southbound Metrolink train and the northbound Burlington Northern Santa Fe train less than a mile east of Fullerton Airport near Brookhurst Road. Investigators were reviewing recording devices in both engines and inspecting switching signals on the tracks to determine whether they were working improperly or if one of the conductors missed a signal.

“What we had was a [freight] train straddling two tracks,” said John Kerins, Metrolink operations director. “The freight train was crossing over, and the passenger train was on the other track.”

Both trains were going slower than the 79-mph posted speed, another factor officials counted as a blessing. The freight train was traveling about 40 mph, and the Metrolink conductor had reduced his speed to 10 mph, they said.

One locomotive and two passengers cars were severely damaged in the crash, but Hidalgo could not give the exact dollar amount of the damage. A locomotive is worth about $2 million, he said, while passengers cars cost about $1.2 million each. All three cars eventually will be repaired and returned to service, he said.

In Thursday’s crash, about 65 people were aboard the 602 Metrolink train that left Union Station at 7:44 a.m. en route to Oceanside, with nine stops--including seven in Orange County--along the way. The train was on track No. 2, the westernmost track, and had a green light three miles northwest of Fullerton Station, the conductor told investigators.

At the same time, a 38-car BNSF freight train was switching from track No. 2 to track No. 1 just northwest of the Fullerton station. The Metrolink engineer, whose name was not released, told investigators he saw the freight train’s engine pass and assumed the track was clear, Klein said.

Then, as he neared the switch, the Metrolink conductor “saw a wall of train in front of him” and slammed on the brakes, Klein said.

“Both conductors thought they had the right of way,” Klein said. “But the Metrolink conductor just couldn’t stop in time.”

If everything had worked properly, the Metrolink train would have received a yellow/green light at the signal three miles away, a warning of traffic crossing ahead, said Lena Kent, BNSF spokeswoman.

She said federal railroad authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and California Public Utilities Commission will investigate using records kept by sensors at signal lights along the track. Each train also has a black box, similar to those in airplanes, that record the trains’ speeds, when the brakes were applied and other operations.

The track is controlled by Burlington Northern dispatchers in San Bernardino, who track lengths, loads and speeds of trains, officials said.

“I’m not going to speculate as to who is at fault,” Kent said, but added that the freight train had “the go-ahead,” or green light.

But Metrolink officials said it was “impossible” for both conductors to have a green light unless a signal malfunctioned. A second light at the point of collision was red, but it’s unclear when it turned red or at what point, or if, the Metrolink conductor saw it, Kerins said.

“It isn’t like a traffic signal,” he said, adding that trains are warned about traffic ahead by a network of lights spaced along the tracks. If the Metrolink engineer had seen a red light, he would have had ample room to stop, Kerins said.

Both conductors will be screened for drugs or alcohol, a routine step in the investigation.

Passengers’ injuries were described as minor. One woman suffered a broken arm, and two female victims were taken to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton. Sharon Gloudeman, 40, of Palmdale bumped her head and sprained her left wrist. She was treated and released.

The second victim, a 24-year-old from Fontana, broke her right arm in the crash. She was stabilized at St. Jude, then transferred to a nearby hospital, where she was scheduled to undergo surgery later in the day. The woman, whose identity was not released, was in fair condition, hospital officials said.

There were no reported injuries among the freight train’s crew.

Sunshine Holguin, 25, of Norwalk was aboard the Metrolink train en route to work at Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral when she heard a series of loud noises and the window next to her shattered.

“There was all kinds of fire,” said Holguin, who injured a knee. “Everyone was just pushing and shoving to get out.”

She said the train didn’t slam to a stop, as in a head-on collision, but slowed rapidly like a car slamming on the brakes as it raked down the side of the freight cars.

“One lady was catapulted out of her seat into mine,” said Todd Trites, 40, who was bound for Fullerton. “It was like a carnival ride.”

Several commuters, convinced fire was about to leap into the train’s upper level, tried to shield themselves under seats. Others leaped to safety through broken windows that were 10 feet off the ground. When one woman saw a river of fuel heading for the fire, she fainted.

Larry Oats, 39, of Compton said he was preparing to depart the train as it approached the Fullerton station. Coming down the stairs from the upper deck, Oats said he felt the train lurch and then he fell. “I thought we were going to turn over and flip and it was going to explode.”

The Metrolink train derailed but remained upright, officials said. A small diesel fuel fire broke out in its engine and was extinguished by firefighters. The 31st car of the 38-car freight train was hit by the Metrolink engine, causing four cars carrying UPS tractor-trailers to derail.

The accident left an army of disgruntled commuters and travelers sitting on their suitcases and waiting for buses at the Santa Ana train station. Entrepreneurial taxi drivers, searching for passengers who didn’t want to wait, swarmed like bees.

Brett Banducci, 20, a third-year student at the University of San Diego, had bought a $31 ticket to see his parents in San Luis Obispo and hopped on the train at 6:47 a.m. The train made it as far as Anaheim, then turned back because the tracks were blocked.

“I was trying, ironically, to beat the Thanksgiving rush,” said Banducci, waiting for a bus to take him to Los Angeles, where he would try to catch another train.

The Santa Ana station was ground zero for confusion as buses waited for passengers from trains arriving from the south, and trains waited for buses arriving from the north. Against that backdrop, worried friends and family members tried to find one another.

Donna Marks had been waiting at the Fullerton station for her mother, Sharon Marks, to arrive from San Diego. After the accident, train officials told her that her mother would arrive by taxi from the Santa Ana station instead.

But the time went by and Marks’ mother never arrived. Train officials told them the mother might have boarded a bus to Los Angeles by mistake.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do,” Marks said, near tears. “We keep calling the house to see if maybe she got home somehow. I have to find her. She’s my mom.”

David Boyle of San Clemente spent the morning on a commute that only returned him to his starting point. Boyle missed the 7:03 a.m. Metrolink train from San Clemente to Los Angeles and got on the next train north--an Amtrak train. When the Amtrak train got to Anaheim, though, it was turned around because of the accident.

Amtrak officials offered him a bus ride to Los Angeles or a return train trip to San Clemente. The bus ride, he said, would have landed him in Los Angeles too late for morning meeting. So he took a refund and stayed on the train, which returned to South County.

“This is a minor inconvenience compared to being in a train wreck,” Boyle said. “I feel pretty lucky today. I’m going to buy a lottery ticket.”

Many Orange County commuters were unaware of the train wreck until they arrived at Union Station in L.A. to catch their regular ride home. Stefani Satalino of Yorba Linda, who waited briefly for a train that had been canceled, said she was frustrated that so little information was posted at the station.

“I need to be home,” said Satalino, a high school teacher. “I didn’t even know about this. In general, [the trains] run on time and you usually count on them.”

The collision comes six weeks after more than 40 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near London’s Paddington station.

And it comes as national railroad officials are testing a sophisticated tracking and signaling system that they believe could prevent as many as 100 train accidents each year.

A system being tested in Illinois and Wisconsin could reduce human error, proponents say. Called “positive train control”--PTC--the system tracks used global positioning to feed trains’ location and speed to dispatch centers and other trains in the vicinity. If an engineer misses a warning to slow down, the computer intercedes.

The most recent Orange County collision occurred in 1989, when two Santa Fe freight trains collided in Yorba Linda after the crew on one of the trains ignored warnings and failed to stop. The accident, which sent the crew of one train leaping from the locomotive, caused minor injuries and $700,000 in damage.

As with airplane accidents, piecing together what caused Thursday’s train crash will require scrutiny of recorded data and comparison of the Metrolink engineer’s actions against the signals given out on the track before the collision.

Authorities from the NTSB were to work with local officials and at least six officials from the Federal Railroad Administration to determine the cause.

“They’ll try to determine likely causes, do a series of tests on equipment, a series of interviews, look at all the data that is recorded,” FRA spokeswoman Pamela Barry said. “They’ll look at all that and try to piece together what they think has happened.”

A review of the last five years of Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s safety record shows that in 2,200 train accidents, only 1% were attributed to signal failure. About a third were caused by human error, according to federal statistics.

Although accidents caused by signal failure are rare, the current signaling system can leave little room for error when the timing of trains is even slightly off, experts said. Signals are placed no closer together than the distance it takes to stop a train traveling the speed limit. Unlike a traffic light, train signals must give advanced warnings to the engineer, who needs a considerable distance to brake.

Metrolink trains, for example, weigh an average of 450 tons and travel up to 79 mph, taking three seconds to go the length of three football fields. An engineer needs about a third of a mile to bring the train to a stop.

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Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Scott Gold, David Haldane, Ray Herndon, Matt Ebnet and correspondents Louise Roug and Young Chang contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Two Trains, One Track

A Metrolink train broadsided a freight train that was switching tracks Thursday morning in Fullerton, injuring 19 passengers, igniting a series of fires and derailing a string of cargo cars. A closer look at the accident:

1. Metrolink train brakes as conductor realizes freight train hasn’t completed switching tracks.

2. Metrolink train collides with freight train, causing cargo cars to derail and sparking fires.

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times