Sheriff warned CN of washout 21 minutes before derailment
(The following story by Corina Curry appeared on the Rockford Register-Star website on June 22, 2009.)
ROCKFORD, Ill. A Winnebago County sheriff sergeant was on the phone with a Canadian National Railway representative 21 minutes before the rail companys 114-car train heading from Freeport to Chicago derailed Friday night in a fiery explosion, said Sheriff Dick Meyers.
Meyers said Sgt. Aaron Booker was working in the countys 911 center Friday night and was notified of four 911 calls regarding a possible washout of the railroad tracks near Sandy Hollow and South Mulford roads. The calls came into Rockfords communication center and county 911 center at about 8 p.m.
Squad inspects tracks
Booker sent a squad to the scene to inspect the washout and made two phone calls, Meyers said. One call went to the Union Pacific Railroad and the other to Canadian National Railway.
Those are the two companies that have tracks running through the area where residents had reported seeing a lot of standing water and water running under the railroad tracks indicating the earth and gravel holding the rail ties in place had been washed away.
We had a squad on the scene that shot video of the washout, and we had communicated with both Union Pacific and Canadian National prior to 8:15 p.m., Meyers said. Sgt. Booker called the emergency notification numbers for both rail lines and spoke to someone, person to person. Someone from the CN line called back minutes before the derailment to verify the address.
We will not comment on any aspect of the NTSB investigation, said CN spokesman Patrick Waldron.
County reacted as it should
The information about the 911 emergency calls reporting possible washout conditions and the handling of the calls is of great importance to the county, Meyers said, because it shows that sheriffs deputies did the right thing.
That is crucial to us, Meyers said. We received information, and we didnt sit on it. We reacted the way we should.
What happened after that is up to the National Transportation Safety Board to figure out, he said.
I dont know anything about trains. I dont know anything about stopping trains, Meyers said. All I know is they had 21 minutes from the first time our office called them until the derailment. We have radio communications in our squads. If they have radio communications, then Id think 21 minutes would be ample time to notify the train and get it to stop.
The train was traveling 34 mph at the time of the accident, well below the 50 mph speed limit, according to information retrieved from the trains data system. Because the train was leaving an urban area, it was accelerating, said Robert Sumwalt, one of the NTSBs five board members and one of 15 NTSB staff members in town for the investigation.
The emergency brake went off at 8:36 p.m., but wasnt deployed by the trains engineer, Sumwalt said. While he wouldnt confirm what set it off, he said the brake can be set off by train cars separating from each other.
It was ugly
Charles Addis, who lives in the 3200 block of Shelburne Drive, about one-quarter mile from the Canadian National Railway rail crossing at South Mulford Road, was one of four people who called 911 about 30 minutes before the derailment.
Those tracks are used three to seven times a day. When I saw that washout there, I thought if a train were to come down there it would be a major disaster, and it was, Addis said. You could tell from looking at it that it couldnt support the weight of a train. It was ugly.
When he learned of the phone calls exchanged between the countys 911 center and Canadian National Friday night just before the crash, Addis said it was a shame someone had to lose their life.
Its frustrating, he said. The community did their job by notifying 911. 911 did their job by notifying the railroad. It was in the railroads hands. Was this a tragedy that could have been prevented?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
-- Edited by Troll on Tuesday 23rd of June 2009 09:27:17 PM
I have seen CN's emergency response in real time. It doesn't surprise me at all that nothing was done in the 21 minutes between the warning and the boom.
__________________
Some people say I have a bad attitude. Those people are stupid.
CHICAGO - Thousands of dead fish suddenly appeared in the Rock River south of Rockford this week, leading state and federal environmental officials to question whether a deadly freight train derailment near that city also spilled thousands of gallons of ethanol into the water, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"Many, many thousands of dead fish" began appearing Sunday over a 53-mile stretch of the river near Grand Detour , about 30 miles southwest of Rockford, Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Stacey Solanosaid Wednesday.
Thomas Cook, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said investigators are looking into the likelihood that up to 60,000 gallons of denatured ethanol spilled into a creek connected to the river when a Canadian National Railway train derailed Friday night.
Cook hopes to have the results of testing on water samples Thursday.
"I don't know ... the cause" for the fish kill, which ended Monday, said Mike Coffey, a contaminants biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I certainly find the timing very coincidental."
The National Transportation Safety Board is trying to determine the cause of the derailment.
Zoila Tellez, 41, of Rockford was killed as she fled her car, which was stopped at a railroad crossing when the train cars left the tracks.
(This item appeared in the Chicago Tribune June 25, 2009.)
I have seen CN's emergency response in real time. It doesn't surprise me at all that nothing was done in the 21 minutes between the warning and the boom.
It is after all, the Certainly No Rush corporation. Doh. Those people are just lucky after the cleanup that fish habitat will be better than before the wreck.
