California Zephyr vs. truck in Nevada, Injuries & fatalities Options

[BillMagee]

The latest tragic count is six fatalities and 28 missing. The missing number does not necessarily equate to fatalities due to likely discrepancies caused uninjured passengers who left without being recorded and ticketed passengers who may not have been on the train at the time. Regardless of the count, this is a chilling accident.

Unofficially among the dead was the conductor, as reported by Trainorders and the United Transportation Union. A colleague of the deceased conductor posted a picture of her on Trainorders. That photo put a human face on this horrific event.

From the Reno Gazette-Journal, 6/25/11:

Workers in white protective suits have pulled the bodies of four passengers from charred train cars, bringing the number of people killed after a semi tractor-trailer slammed into an Amtrak train to six Saturday.

An Amtrak conductor was killed in the crash, as well as the truck driver, a man in his mid-40s who worked for John Davies Trucking of Battle Mountain. The United Transportation Union said on its website that conductor Laurette Lee, 68, of South Lake Tahoe was one of the victims.

The full story is HERE.

[KevinKorell]

The latest tragic count is six fatalities and 28 missing. The missing number does not necessarily equate to fatalities due to likely discrepancies caused uninjured passengers who left without being recorded and ticketed passengers who may not have been on the train at the time.

... although it would have been difficult for uninjured passengers to just leave, as the scene was in the middle of the desert. They could not have just blended into the community; if they did, they are still out there walking and looking for water.

Time will tell whether the fatalities were due to the collision or the resulting fire. Maybe that will give a clue as to what happened to those missing. 28 seems like a lot to not be accountable for. I assume that one purpose of taking them to the school was to compare the passengers with the manifest. Of course if the conductor perished, the records might have as well.

And then there's always somebody who would, say, be ticketed on the Southwest Chief to Chicago but get off in Kansas City, right? But 28 of them?

[CNJRoss]

Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, CA, 6/26:

Train conductor, formerly of Concord, remembered for her fierce love

CONCORD -- One of Mindy Mohammed's favorite memories was when her grandmother allowed her to be a real conductor on a train.

She was only 10 years old at the time, but her grandmother Laurette Lee let her pull the train whistle, see the engine room and learn about the engineer's complex set of controls.

And once the train began to leave the station, Lee and her granddaughter got to work collecting tickets.

"She said, 'OK, back to business. Let's get our work done,' " said Mohammed, recalling her grandmother's words. "She always wanted us to have fun and learn."

Mohammed gathered together with family and friends in Lee's longtime Concord home Saturday, remembering the 68-year-old family matriarch who died Friday when a tractor-trailer slammed into the side of her Amtrak train in rural Nevada. It was a life Lee's family delighted in retelling.

Lee was born into the train business. Her grandfather Hilary Turley worked for the railroads in Hercules. Her great-grandfather Aaron Turley was also a railroad man. Her brother is an Amtrak dispatcher.

Continue.

[CNJRoss]

San Francisco Chronicle, 6/26:

Conductor identified in fiery train crash

Friends and family members today are mourning a 68-year-old former Concord resident identified as the conductor of the Emeryville-bound Amtrak train that was struck by a big rig in a fiery collision Friday in the Nevada desert that killed at least six people.

SNIP

Officials said late Saturday it was not clear whether the 28 people who remain unaccounted for were on board at the time of the crash, which occurred shortly before 11:30 a.m. Friday at a remote U.S. 95 rail crossing.

SNIP

Two other truck drivers watched as the lead rig in a convoy failed to stop for flashing warning signals and veered around safety gates into the train, federal investigators said.

Complete article.

[CNJRoss]

Wall Street Journal online, 6/26:

Key western U.S. railroad route re-opens in Nevada
Federal investigators probing cause of collision that killed 6

Freight shipments have resumed on the Union Pacific Railroad’s main line across Nevada into Northern California as a federal-state investigation continued Sunday into the fiery big rig-Amtrak collision outside Reno that left at least six people dead and 28 others unaccounted for.

The death toll from Friday’s crash “may go up; we’re waiting for some forensic anthropologists to come in to really go over the affected cars. Both of those railcars were burned fairly significantly ...” said trooper Chuck Allen, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety.

SNIP

The collision started a fire on the train and kept National Transportation Safety Board search teams from entering the burned-out wreckage of two passenger cars until Saturday afternoon, according to Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle.

SNIP

The driver was leading a convoy of three rigs, with the two following trucks seeing the signals activate at the crossing and noting the lead truck didn’t stop. “In fact, they were waiting for him to stop,” Weener said.

Investigators also interviewed the train’s engineer, who saw the truck approaching the train and “at some point knew impact was imminent. He watched the collision in a rearview mirror” and verified the gates were down, Weener said.

Read more here.

[CNJRoss]

AP via The Republic, Columbus, IN, 6/26:

Forensics team from Pa.'s Mercyhurst College headed to truck-Amtrak crash in Nevada

ERIE, Pa. — A forensic anthropology team from Mercyhurst College in Erie is headed to Nevada to help recover bodies from the crash of a tractor-trailer that smashed into two Amtrak passenger train cars at a railroad crossing.

Dennis Dirkmaat heads the Mercyhurst program and is an expert in recovering human remains from outdoor scenes. He headed recovery efforts when a Continental Express plane crashed . . .

Read more here.

[jis]

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A spokesman said one crew member, conductor Laurette Lee, had died and that five passengers were missing. The Washoe County Medical Examiner said it had six unidentified bodies, suggesting that just one person remains unaccounted for. The agency is handling the autopsies for smaller Churchill County.

See the whole article here.

Also in the same article:

A colleague of d'Alessandro, who requested anonymity because Amtrak has forbidden employees from talking to the press, said d'Allesandro had been a hero. Though his arm was mangled in the collision, the co-worker said, he climbed under at least one of the two double-decker passenger cars that were crippled to close necessary valves - and to uncouple it to prevent the fire from spreading toward the engine.

D'Allessandro then walked the train, making sure people were off before accepting help, his colleague said.

One of d'Alessandro's fingers, though, was nearly torn off, said his niece, Michelle Childs of Elk Grove (Sacramento County). She said doctors were able to save the finger, and her uncle had surgery on his arm on Saturday. He expects to be released from the hospital in Reno and on his way home today.

"He was right in the same area where the conductor was that got killed. He's absolutely, totally lucky," Childs said. "He's going to make it, but it's going to be a long recovery."

[CNJRoss]

AP via The Washington Post, 6/27:

Authorities comb wreckage of Nev. Amtrak crash that killed 6, say no new victims found so far

SPARKS, Nev. — Authorities say five people remained unaccounted for following a fiery crash involving a big rig and an Amtrak train in the Nevada desert, but investigators say they’ve yet to find any more bodies in the wreck that left six dead.

Amtrak lowered the number of unaccounted passengers Sunday, a day after authorities said they couldn’t locate 28 of the more than 200 passengers believed to be on board at the time of the collision Friday. The company also said 14 crew members were on the California Zephyr from Chicago.

Continue.

[CNJRoss]

Passenger Brock Hanson has posted these photos on RailPictures.net:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=367036
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=367044
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=367048

[KevinKorell]

The fact that the truck involved was the lead in a 3-vehicle convoy has to lend doubt to the speculation he was trying to beat the train past the crossing. Why do that, when he had to know the two trucks behind him wouldn't make it? He would have had to pull over past the crossing and wait anyhow for the train to pass so the other two trucks could join him once more.

While it is disturbing that missing people still cannot be located and that the worst is feared, the number 5 or 6 is better than 28. Hopefully the walking wounded or unwounded came forward and checked in with Amtrak realizing there had been a discrepancy.