UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, February 19, 1996
11A
11 die in commuter train crash
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Investigators picked through mangled wreckage yesterday to determine why a commuter train was moving more than twice as fast as it should have been just before slamming into an Amtrak passenger liner on Friday. Eleven people died in the ensuing fireball.
The MARC commuter train was going 63 mph, when its engineer apparently sighted the approaching Amtrak locomotive and slammed on the emergency brakes, said National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia. It was too late to avoid the deadly pileup.
But the signal cannot be completely checked until the wreckage is removed from the tracks, a process that was continuing yesterday.
"Clearly the focus is moving toward the operator since we have found absolutely no difficulties anywhere else," Googla said Saturday.
"He is the choreographer of train movements. He has a very critical role, and that's why we have asked him to come here," said Goglia, who is leading the investigation.
A signal a few miles back should have warned the MARC train to slow to 30 mph and be prepared to stop. Investigators want to know whether the engineer missed that signal or if it malfunctioned.
conductor James Majors, 48, of Linthicum, Md.; and assistant conductor James Quillen, 53, of Frederick, Md.
The signals are operated by radio from CSX Transportation's central offices in Jacksonville, Fla.
The dispatcher on duty at the time of the wreck was coming to Washington to meet with board investigators.
Orr was a 25-year employee of CSX, Majors had been with the company 26 years and Quillen had 30 years of service, said CSX representative Kathy Burns. CSX operates the commuter rail system for the Maryland Department of Transportation.
The three-member MARC crew was among those who died in the nearly head-on crash. They were identified Sunday as engineer Richard Orr, 43, of Glen Burnie, Md;
Also killed in the wreck were eight Job Corps workers from Harper's Ferry, W.Va., who were headed to Washington for the long weekend. Only minor injuries were reported aboard the Amtrak train, which was on the way to Chicago from Washington.
One of the victims, Dante Swain of Baltimore, had just passed the last test needed for his high school equivalency certificate.
The crash victims were the subject of prayers yesterday. With President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton in attendance at Foundry United Methodist Church, senior minister J. Philip Wogaman lamented the accident.
"What a tragedy for the young Job Corps volunteers," he said. "Suddenly their whole future was snuffed out in that accident."
His parents, John and Marjorie Swain, planned to take time off work this week to attend his graduation ceremony. Instead, they spent Saturday waiting for word of their son's fate.
The Amtrak train was moving about 30 mph and had just begun to
As Goglia described the accident, the MARC engineer hit his emergency brakes about 15 seconds before impact, slowing the train from 63 mph to about 40 mph by the time the trains collided.
Knight-Ridder Tribune
switch to another track. The Amtrak engineer did not apply his brakes, said Goglia, "nor would you want to he wants to clear the tracks."
A yellow signal at Kensington, Md.,
a few miles before the wreck, should have told the MARC train to slow down, and there should have been a red signal just before the crossover where the accident occurred.
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The Associated Press
Double-decker bus explodes in London
Ambulances and five fire engines rushed to the Aldwych area of central London, emergency services officials said, after the explosion at 10:38 p.m. on Wellington Street near the Strand, a thoroughfare in west-central London. Scotland Yard confirmed that eight people were injured.
The bus, on a scheduled route, exploded outside the Waldorf Hotel in an area that would have been filled with theatergoers on any night but Sunday, when most London stages are dark.
"We were all in a complete state of panic," Johnson said. "We were crouching down away from the windows. We ran outside and asked the bar manager to call the police and ambulance."
Five wounded men and one woman were admitted to St. Thomas' Hospital.
"The bus driver and the taxi driver both looked dead," Yates said. "There's a guy lying outside the bus saying, 'My legs, my legs.' There was another guy with blood coming from his jaw."
The red double-decker remained upright on its four wheels, but the blast had turned the top into just a few mangled shreds of metal. The bottom was gutted by fire, and all of the windows were blown out. Bleeding people, some in shock, were lying in the street or running in horror.
Mark Johnson, 26, from Toronto, who was with friends in a pub on the Strand, said he had heard a very loud explosion and a very loud bang.
Three with minor injuries were released. The woman and two men who were in the bus at the time of the blast were still hospitalized.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion immediately fell on the Irish Republican Army, which broke its 17-month cease-fire on Feb. 9 by planting a truck bomb that devastated the Docklands business center, killing two people and wounding scores.
Eyewitness Anthony Yates, 26, said he believed at least three people were dead, but there was no official confirmation.
Police said they had received no warning before the blast.
LONDON — An explosion tore through a double-decker bus in central London yesterday, injuring at least eight people and showing the street with shards of glass and twisted metal.
"I was walking down the road, and I saw a big white flash in the sky," Yates said. "I looked, and then I saw a double-decker bus, but there was nothing left of it. It was completely blown to pieces."
He said that a taxi drove into the bus, and that a nearby bank building was badly hit.
Two of the wounded were taken to University College Hospital. One, a middle-aged man, was in intensive care with chest injuries, in serious but stable condition.
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