24 April 2007
Authorities Searching for Engineer After Out-of-Control Train Plunges 15 Metres
Trail British Columbia - Authorities searched for a train
engineer Tuesday, hoping the man managed to jump off an out-of-control locomotive along with two colleagues after the
train charged over a trestle, missed a sharp curve, and crashed down an embankment.
A spokesman for Canadian Pacific Railway said investigators are uncertain whether the engineer stayed with the locomotives or tried to
escape. "Our thoughts are very much with his family at this point and his colleagues who were with him," said Mark Seland.
The other two crew members were treated in hospital and are OK.
At the Coffee Coop Tuesday morning, David Palmer worried about the people involved in the wreck.
"It's upsetting," he said.
"You worry because I know everybody in Trail. Is it one of my friends? Like a good friend? Like I have 10, 12 friends who work for
CP Rail. I still don't know who it is that's missing."
The train derailed Monday afternoon as it headed down a hill into the city in British Columbia's West Kootenay region near the Teck
Cominco lead-zinc smelter.
Trail resident Edgar Bailey, who lives nearby, said he saw the train jump the tracks.
"All you could hear was this crunch," he told radio station CJAT.
"All of a sudden, it's coming in and it's going over the overpass. It's coming down and you could see smoke coming out of the back
brakes on the second engine."
Bailey said it appeared the engineer was trying to slow it.
" He's trying to stop it. He didn't make the corner."
Wendy Garby said she was sitting outside with her friends when they heard the train come. She told CJAT she could tell something was
very wrong.
"It always shoots its whistle, you know, and it was going really, really fast and there was smoke coming up off it, which we've
never seen (and) we've been here for 14 years."
She said the enormity of the accident hit home when her husband returned from his job at Teck Cominco.
"He told me that the two engines ended up flipped upside down right outside his change room, about 50 feet away from where he
parks the truck. "
Two locomotives went down the 15-metre embankment, dragging along seven fertilizer cars after crossing the trestle, which
spans a highway.
Trail Mayor Dieter Bogs said it appears to have been "a runaway train," likely caused by brake failure.
He wasn't surprised the two crew members jumped, but he worried about the engineer.
"That is basically the instructions they have. If they have a train that is out of control, they jump and save their lives and
don't get involved in a... smash-up with, you know, tons and tons and tons of metal."
He said he hoped to find out more following an afternoon meeting with CP Rail.
Seland said the railway hasn't drawn any conclusions about whether the train was a runaway.
Instead, he said the company is "interviewing witnesses, the crew members on the train, and viewing the data from the event
recorder that's on the train to try to piece that together to see just what occurred and how to prevent future occurrences."
John Maclean, administrator for the Kootenay Regional District, said the derailment could have been much worse.
A number of rail cars left the tracks just before an overpass that crosses the town's main highway between Trail and Castlegar.
"It's generally just above our heads, kind of thing. The community is lucky," he said.
But luck aside, he noted "the engines did create a mess."
"There are still three cars, to my knowledge, that are standing on the tracks, the rest of them did flip and turn over."
Seland said fertilizer spilled from some of the cars. He described it as a "granulated, solid fertilizer that's used in farming
applications."
It poses no environmental threat, but officials are on site to try to recover it.
Authorities with the Transportation Safety Board, the RCMP, emergency response, and the railway are also
there.
|
