Trauma Program for Rail Engineers Debated

In November, it was a driver trying to beat the train at night. In July, it was an evangelist preaching to someone on the other side of the tracks. Before that, it was the driver of a tractor-trailer at an unprotected railroad crossing.

In Ventura County, 13 people were killed by trains in 1998. In all these cases, there were other, less-publicized victims--the engineers at the controls.

They are the ones with the ongoing nightmares, wondering if there was any way they could have prevented the accidents.

They are people like Tom Stokes, a Simi Valley resident and Metrolink engineer who’s been involved in at least 30 collisions in the last seven years, including five fatalities.

Stokes’ worst accident involved two girls, both 11, who were playing “chicken” on the tracks near Glendale. The two were darting back and forth across the tracks when they were hit.

The youths suffered severe injuries and remained in the hospital for almost a year. Stokes, a 20-year veteran of the rails, said the memory of hitting the two girls--then the same age as his daughter--will haunt him forever.

On average, an engineer like Stokes will face about seven fatalities in the span of a career, making it among the most psychologically demanding jobs a person can hold, said Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo.

Although engineers know what dangers they can expect, no amount of training or forethought can prepare them for the actual experience of hitting a child or seeing the terror in the eyes of a motorist moments before impact, they say.

And while the train industry has made significant strides in recent years in providing educational and counseling programs for employees, some say the psychological services are not as comprehensive or effective as those offered to workers in comparable industries such as law enforcement and fire departments.

Most importantly, they say, the mental health of engineers is crucial to public safety, especially at a time of increasing commuter train service locally. In 1998, there were about 500 non-suicide deaths involving train accidents nationwide, officials said.

After his Metrolink commuter train leaves the Moorpark station at 5 a.m. on its daily trip to downtown Los Angeles, Stokes blows his horn every few seconds, changes speed constantly and communicates frequently with a central dispatch center.

All the while his eyes dart from the tracks to his control panel to the side streets and back to the tracks. He stands or sits, but he watches like a hawk as the train makes its way through Simi Valley.

Stokes once had three Simi Valley school buses dart across the tracks in one day.

Simi drivers are careless and foolhardy, he said, especially where New Los Angeles Avenue parallels the tracks. Numerous crossings provide ample opportunities for people to skirt the gates or stop on the tracks, which they often do.

“I’m going to have a collision in Simi very soon,” Stokes said. “It’s just the law of averages.”

Stokes’ only accident in Ventura County was in 1996, when two young men were driving their new pickup truck on the tracks between Moorpark and Simi Valley.

As Stokes’ train came around a curve at 75 mph, the distant truck was zooming on and around the tracks. Stokes blew his horn and threw on the emergency brake, but the truck continued to speed along next to the train. When the collision occurred, Stokes hurled himself onto the floor to avoid flying glass and metal.

“I thought I killed them, and we went to look for the bodies,” he said. When he finally found the truck, demolished in a ravine, the two men were nearby, uninjured but badly shaken.

Stokes said one of his most traumatic crashes occurred in September 1996 and involved a motorist who tried to beat the train.

“He must have misjudged the speed of the train, and he tried to go across but his car stalled on the tracks,” Stokes said. “He made every attempt to get out of the way, his door was open and he got tangled in his seat belt. I saw his desperate and frantic attempts to get out of the way. But he didn’t make it.

“I thought it was so traumatic because I saw he was so frantically trying to live.”

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Gary Adams, a 20-year train veteran who was riding with Stokes that early morning, said his first fatality involved a 19-year-old boy in 1995.

“I came around a bend, heading for San Diego at 90 mph, and there were two figures walking along,” Adams said. “I’m blowing my horn and ringing my bell, and one guy stepped left and the other right. But the one kid thought he had time to make it back across to his friend. That was it.”

His second fatality was a 90-year-old man who walked around crossing gates as the train approached, Adams said.

“I saw him, he tried to hurry, but it was too late,” he said. “I’m sure he never wanted to end his life that way.”

Both men agreed that the majority of the crashes occur because people make stupid mistakes, not because they have a death wish.

Hidalgo said he cannot remember a time when an accident occurred because the engineer made a mistake. “It’s rarely the fault of train equipment or the engineer going wacky,” he said. “It’s always a tragic senseless act by a motorist or pedestrian.”

Metrolink, a commuter rail system that serves six Southern California counties, has had 82 non-suicide fatalities since it started service in 1992 and reported only one in 1999, Hidalgo said. Metrolink had 13 fatalities in 1998 and 16 in 1997.

“I’d like to say we are wonderful at educating the public and that’s why the number dropped, but I need to be cautious because fatalities fluctuate every year,” Hidalgo said. “We believe along our tracks the public is more aware and there are probably fewer senseless acts like jogging along the tracks wearing headsets.”

Engineers Often Blame Themselves

Despite the knowledge that most collisions aren’t their fault, engineers often blame themselves, said Larry Dubois, Amtrak’s transportation manager in Ventura County. They need to be reassured they did all they could to prevent an accident, Dubois said.

“After a terrible accident in a car, you can go down a different street, but we don’t have that opportunity,” he said. “We just relive it day after day.”

Amtrak, like most rail companies, has a counseling program to help engineers deal with the trauma of collisions. Amtrak’s Peer Support Program aims to ensure that every engineer who’s involved in a collision gets a call within a few hours hours of the accident. The program also covers Metrolink engineers who are under contract with Amtrak.

“Acute stress reactions can occur as a result of this type of train accident, and we feel that so many of our folks have been through this, they may be more comfortable talking to a peer,” said Effie Bastas, manager of Amtrak’s program. “It’s gradually evolving over the years.”

She said peer participants have gone through a training program, so they know what questions to ask and how to tell if someone needs more serious counseling.

The system, set up several years ago, involves a team of engineers carrying pagers that register the place and circumstances of a crash.

Bill Rogers, an engineer since 1979 and an Amtrak peer counselor, said that when he carried a pager, it wasn’t particularly successful because he rarely got called.

He said the current system is decentralized and often difficult to navigate. “I’ll sometimes find out about a collision on the evening news and call in to find out who it is so I can give him a call,” Rogers said.

Some engineers say they’ve never been called, while others report a sense of relief when the peer counselors do make contact.

Rogers said peer counselors can only do so much.

“I can’t spot real psychosis,” he said. “It takes a real qualified professional to treat and diagnosis post-traumatic stress disorder. What I encourage people to do is to stop trying to be tough and to start talking about what they feel. But beyond that, I refer them to someone like Bonnie.”

Bonnie Mathews, a crisis intervention counselor who worked with victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, said it is important for engineers to get professional intervention, not just peer counseling.

In order to bring the train industry up to speed with other high-trauma fields such as law enforcement and fire departments, she said, professional counseling and time off must be mandatory.

“In the railroad industry there has been a tug-of-war,” Mathews said. “At least locally, here in Southern California, they are using an employee assistance counselor, not someone trained for critical incidents. This is really the only industry out there that has resisted the idea that [trauma] is a work-related incident and needs to be treated that way.”

She said the rail industry is at least 10 years behind law enforcement, primarily because of opposition from engineers and lack of management organization.

The male-dominated train industry has a culture that encourages employees to put their problems behind them and get back to work, Mathews said. “When I first started working with law enforcement over 10 years ago it was the same way--there was some resistance. But now if they don’t get it [time off and counseling], they want to know why.”

Steve Grab, an Amtrak engineer for nine years, said the current support services work fine and he would resent any mandatory action.

“We all know the numbers to call if we need help,” he said. “It is nice to have that option, but I don’t need it, and I don’t think it should be forced on me.”

Grab had three fatalities near Oxnard in the late 1980s and had nightmares about one, a 3-year-old girl who was walking home. But since that time--more than 10 years ago--he has not been plagued by lingering trauma.

“In my opinion, it is not that difficult to deal with because I don’t have any control over the crash,” he said. “So I don’t dwell on it.”

He said if he hit someone in his car, he would feel responsible. “But this train isn’t the same thing as a car because I can’t stop it.”

Union Satisfied With Assistance Program

Bastas, with Amtrak’s Peer Support Program, said workers like Grab are the main reason the services aren’t compulsory. “We have looked at making it mandatory, and we are not sure if it’s really necessary. Some of these people are pretty sophisticated about themselves. They are pretty good at knowing when they need time off.”

A spokesman at the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the union for most of the rail industry, said his group is satisfied with the services being provided by the employee assistance program.

“Some people say they are more comfortable speaking with their peers,” said John Bentley, a spokesman for the union in Cleveland. “If there was a set person you had to talk to, they might not appreciate being required to do that.”

But critics of the current system stressed it’s not just the mental health of the engineers that is at stake. It is a question of public safety.

Rogers, the peer support counselor, stressed how important it is for engineers to be alert at all times because they are constantly faced with safety hazards.

“A near-miss could start you thinking about what could have happened, and you could miss a light or make a mistake,” he said. “Those trains don’t run themselves.”

He said engineers’ reluctance to seek professional help should be seen as a warning sign of a potentially larger problem.

“Some people are afraid if they see someone, that person will say they are not fit to work,” Rogers said. “That right there tells you they are concerned themselves.”

Mathews agreed. “Could you hit a kid and go back to the same place and concentrate? They need to be paying attention constantly or it is a real hazard.”

When Stokes heads out each morning, he sometimes reflects on the accidents he’s had and how they have affected his life. Over the years, to help himself cope, he has sought professional therapy and continues to meet for Bible study with other engineers.

“I get through it by my faith in God,” he said. “When I see so much death and sorrow, for me that is the only thing that really works.”