Victims’ Kin Visit Train Crash Site

Lien Wiley began to sob as she entered the Metrolink Central Maintenance Facility in Mount Washington on Sunday to meet other relatives of victims in last month’s deadly train derailment near Glendale. They had gathered to visit the crash site about three miles away for the first time since the disaster in which 11 people died and at least 180 were injured.

“I can’t look at the trains,” said Wiley, whose husband, Donald Wiley, 58, was killed in the Jan. 26 crash that involved three trains. “It’s so painful.”

Metrolink officials took victims’ family members and friends in two buses to the crash site. Fire officials lined up with hands clasped in front of them as the buses pulled up. Grief counselors and chaplains stood by to provide support. Wiley and other relatives prayed and left flowers on the tracks.

Even as she wept, said Wiley, 57, she could not stop thinking that the deaths could have been prevented.

Like some others who lost family members, Wiley said she was angry that the commuter train in which her husband was riding lacked seat belts and impact-absorbing crumple zones like those in European train cars, which are built to collapse in a controlled manner.

Eight people, including Wiley’s husband, were killed on southbound train No. 100 when a man apparently intending to commit suicide parked his SUV in its path, then jumped out of the way in time to watch a chain-reaction wreck.

Three others died on northbound train No. 901. Her husband’s train was smashed, Wiley said, “like an accordion.”

Wiley also believes the Metrolink crash was so deadly because the train that slammed into the Jeep Grand Cherokee was led by a cab car -- a modified passenger car -- rather than a heavier locomotive.

Although media were not allowed on Sunday’s tour, Wiley spoke with a reporter because she said she wanted people to hear her story so they would urge transportation and government officials to make the rail system safer.

“I have to bring this to the public. That’s the only way the Metrolink people will open their eyes up,” she said. “I want them to see what the negligence of the Metrolink company has done to these victims’ families.”

In a letter, Wiley has asked Metrolink and government officials to plant large bushes and install metal fences along the rails to prevent vehicles from driving onto tracks, add automatic gates at every crossing, design rail cars to be safer, keep engines in front of the cars, and redesign tracks to prevent collisions.

Don Wiley had four adult children, two adult stepchildren and five grandchildren, with another on the way. He worked as an information technology specialist at PayPoint, which develops electronic payment systems for businesses.

The couple had been married for 12 years and attended United Methodist Church in Simi Valley, near their home, where he served as an usher. They had planned to celebrate their anniversary in Hawaii this year, but Wiley said she cannot think about going anymore, adding: “I cannot even bear to look at my home.”

On Sunday, she wore a small Jesus pin on her shirt. She had cut off most her hair to put in a pillow that she placed in her husband’s coffin.

“I wanted to send a part of myself with him,” she said Sunday.

At the crash site, she left a bouquet of red and white roses next to the tracks where she believed her husband died. She prayed alongside two candles and kissed the ground. She touched a locket that held some of her husband’s ashes. “I love you so much,” she said, moaning. “You called out for me, and I was not there.”

Wiley placed three pieces of twisted and charred metal in a plastic bag. She took two rocks from near the tracks, one for her and one for her husband. She tucked two roses, one pink and one red, into her purse.

Later, along with other families, she toured a train car that was not involved in the crash to visualize where passengers had been sitting during the accident.

“There was nothing to protect them,” she said, pausing on the second floor of the car, where she believed her husband had been sitting. She said he thought the people on the first floor “talked too much.”

Besides, she added, the top floor made him “closer to heaven.”