Farm Hand Dies in Train Crash

An Amtrak train slammed into a farm tractor Friday afternoon, killing the tractor driver, injuring 12 of the 120 train passengers and setting a fire in the surrounding fields.

The 65-year-old tractor driver, whose name was not released, died on impact, officials said.

The collision near 5th Street about a mile east of Las Posas Road came less than two weeks after the launch of an educational campaign for farm workers who labor near rail crossings. The crossing, which is near Camarillo, had no gate.

The accident occurred at about 2 p.m. as the train carrying holiday travelers headed north toward Goleta, said Officer Craig Williams of the California Highway Patrol.

Passengers heard a boom and then looked out the side windows of the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner to see dry brush burning out of control. Smoke poured through the train and passengers scrambled to flee.

“I was trying to help some elderly people who had the absolute look of fear on their face. It was a vacation that turned into a nightmare,” said Reggie Nelson, 42, of San Diego, who was on his way to Santa Barbara for the weekend. “People were saying, ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,’ but other people were screaming to get off the train.”

About 15 minutes after the crash, several injured passengers were treated by paramedics at a makeshift triage center between a muddy irrigation ditch and a lemon grove.

About 50 feet away, other passengers huddled on a dirt road as firefighters tried to douse the burning train.

As the train rounded a curve, the tractor driver, who was towing a dirt grader, stopped for a moment at the edge of the tracks on a mound off 5th Street. With the engineer’s horn blaring, he tried to beat the train across, Williams said.

The tractor was pushed about 400 feet down the track before the train stopped, Williams said. Its charred steel skeleton and a blackened section of the seven-car passenger train were still burning an hour after the crash.

Vernae Graham, a spokeswoman for Amtrak, said the train would be removed late Friday evening.

At the scene, Amtrak buses were arriving to take stranded passengers “wherever they need to go,” an Amtrak employee said. Portable toilets and blankets were ordered for them as they waited.

“If they’re still here after dark, they’re going to get cold,” said Joe Luna, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

Paramedics transported five passengers to area hospitals for treatment. None of the injuries were considered life-threatening, Luna said. Seven other passengers sustained minor injuries and declined hospital treatment.

Santa Barbara resident Michael Estok choked back tears as he described a chaotic scene inside the front rail car.

“There was this pop and the smoke just started pouring in,” said Estok, who was returning from a Thanksgiving celebration in San Diego with his daughter. “It was quite a concussion. I thought the whole train was going to roll over.”

Estok, who was treated at the scene for a cut to his left leg, said he was sitting in a front car when the tractor caught fire. The train’s locomotive was at the rear.

As part of an educational campaign earlier this month, officials from the CHP and other law enforcement agencies reminded workers at three farms along the same rail line to keep an eye open for oncoming trains when working near the tracks. Pure-Pak was not one of those farms.

Friday’s collision was the second this year involving a train and a farm worker at a crossing without a gate off 5th Street.

In March, 19-year-old Juan Gabriel Lopez of Oxnard suffered skull and pelvis fractures after his Suzuki sedan collided with a southbound Metrolink train.

Since 1992, at least 24 people have died in accidents involving Amtrak and Metrolink trains in Ventura County.

The last major crash occurred near Moorpark on Nov. 4, 2000, when a northbound train with 84 passengers collided with a truck, killing the driver and critically injuring his passenger.

That crash also occurred at a crossing with no gate.

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Times staff writer David Kelly contributed to this report.