Re: That crash in the US

["John Regan" <reganjd@clear.net.nz>]

For pictures of the  crash;-
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/4450/amtrak1.htm

Wednesday March 17 5:21 AM ET

Truck Driver Under Investigation In Amtrak Crash

             By Andrew Stern

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. (Reuters) - The driver of the truck involved in the
Amtrak train smash in which at least 13 people were killed may have
steered around crossing gates before the accident, investigators said
Tuesday.

             Three people were still unaccounted for 24 hours after the
collision south of Chicago. More than 100 people were injured, six
critically, when the train carrying more than 200 people derailed and
slammed into a pair of parked freight cars.

Rescue workers continued to comb through the twisted and charred wreckage
of the sleeper car and dining cars where most of the victims died on the
``City of New Orleans'' train. It appeared the death toll was the third
highest in Amtrak's history.

President Clinton said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims and
promised a careful investigation to find out what happened.

John Goglia, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board
investigating the accident, told reporters that the truck driver and the
train's engineer had provided different accounts of the moments before the
crash.

The badly injured engineer told investigators the gates were down when the
truck entered the crossing, while the driver said they were not, Goglia
said. Investigators were also examining muddy tire tracks that might
indicate the truck veered around closed gates before being clipped by the
train.

Goglia said initial tests showed the warning lights and gates worked, and
would have given a vehicle 27 seconds to get clear given the train's speed
of 79 mph. Readings taken from the train's ``black box'' data recorder
showed the engineer throttled back before the crash to slow the train.

Goglia said two boxcars, one loaded with steel, parked on an adjacent
track may have ``contributed substantially'' to the severity of the
accident. The lighter passenger cars bounced into them after the collision
with the truck caused a derailment.

``Being that these cars are heavy, it's akin to striking a stone wall,''
Goglia said.

He said it was possible the truck driver may not have had a clear view of
the oncoming train because of two other freight cars parked near the
crossing.

He said that based on Amtrak's belief that 214 people were on board, there
may still be three missing. But he described the figures as ``soft'' since
some people may have boarded the train and not been ticketed before the
crash.

He put the death toll at 13 and said the search for more victims would
continue.

``I never imagined anything quite like (it),'' said a shaken Mike
Harshbarger, fire chief in Bourbonnais, a town 50 miles south of Chicago
where the train crashed. Children were among those killed and the injured
ranged from the elderly to an eight-year-old girl whose right foot was
amputated.

``They were sitting there or standing somewhere in the dining car and then
all of a sudden they were thrown against the wall and had injuries to the
chest, abdomen or head, just from being thrown within that car,'' said
Ronald Kurzejka, medical director at a hospital treating some of the
victims.

The Illinois Secretary of State's office identified the truck driver as
John Stokes, 58, of Manteno, Ill., and said he was driving on a
probationary license. His regular license was suspended in January after
he got three speeding tickets during the previous year.

It said he had taken a required safety class and his probationary period
would have ended in two weeks.

According to records obtained from the Illinois Commerce Commission there
had been seven other accidents since 1964 at the crossing, three of them
involving fatalities. But Goglia said records showed no incidents in the
past year where the gates did not work, noting one case where the gates
came down when there was no train.

A senior lawmaker criticized the government for its slow pace in setting
crash standards for rail passenger cars.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster said the probable
cause would not be known for some time but it appeared that nearly all the
passenger deaths occurred in a single car -- the sleeping car.

``I am gravely concerned that the Federal Railroad Administration still
has not issued binding regulations setting structural crashworthiness
standards for rail passenger cars,'' the Pennsylvania Republican said in a
statement.

Congress had directed the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to adopt
initial standards by November 1997 and final standards by November this
year, Shuster said. ``Sadly, all we have at this point from FRA are
proposed regulations,'' he said.

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