The Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22. PDT (23:22 UTC) on Friday, September 12, 2008, when the Union Pacific carrier train and Metrolink commuter train collided head-to-head in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California. The scene of the accident was a curved part of a single track on the Metrolink Ventura County Line east of Stoney Point.
According to the National Transportation Safety Agency (NTSB), which investigates the cause of the collision, the Metrolink train ran through a red signal before entering part of a single lane where an opposing carriage was authorized by the rail operator.. NTSB blames Metrolink train engineer Robert M. Sanchez, 46, for having crashed, concluding that he was distracted by a text message he sent while on duty.
This mass casualty event brought massive emergency responses by both the city and the Los Angeles area, but the nature and extent of physical trauma weighed on the resources available. Responses include CEMP (California Mobile Patrol Search and Rescue) as the first responding unit requested by the LAPD. With 25 deaths, this became the deadliest accident in Metrolink history. Many have survived in the hospital for a long time. Lawyers quickly began filing claims against Metrolink, and in total, they were expected to exceed the $ 200 million liability limit set in 1997, signaling the first legal challenge to the law. Problems surrounding this accident have also initiated and revived the public debate on various topics including public relations, safety and emergency management, which have also resulted in regulatory and legislative actions, including the 2008 Railway Enhancement Law.
Video 2008 Chatsworth train collision
Collision
The 111 commuter train metrolink 111, consisting of a 250,000 pound (110 Â ° C) F59PH locomotive (SCAXÃ, 855) that drew three Bombardier BiLevel coaches, departed from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles at 15: 35Ã, PDT (22: 35Ã , UTC) head west to Moorpark on the outskirts of Ventura County. About 40 minutes later, the plane departed from Chatsworth station with 222 people in it, and had traveled about 1.25 miles (2 km) when colliding directly with the local freight carrier Union Pacific. The freight trains are led by two SD70ACe locomotives, UP 8485 and 8491, each weighing 408,000 pounds (185 Â °), and pulling 17 freight cars. The Metrolink locomotive backs into the passenger compartment of the first passenger car and catches fire. The three locomotives, passenger cars of the leading Metrolink and ten freight cars, were derailed, and both main locomotives and passenger cars crashed.
The collision occurred after Metrolink passenger engine engineer Robert M. Sanchez, 46, failed to comply with a red stop signal indicating that it was unsafe to proceed to a single track section. The railway operator's computer at the remote control center in Pomona does not display a pre-crash warning according to NTSB. Metrolink initially reported that the dispatcher tried in vain to contact the train crew to warn them; but NTSB contradicts this report, saying dispatchers see the problem only after the accident, and were told by the first passenger train conductor.
Both trains move toward each other at the time of the collision. At least one passenger on the Metrolink train reported seeing the freight train just before the impact, coming around the corner. The passenger trainer, who was behind the car and injured in the crash, estimated that the train was driving at 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) before suddenly stopping after a collision. The NTSB reports that its journey is 42 miles per hour (68 km/h). The freight trains travel at roughly the same speed after the engineer triggers an emergency airbrake just two seconds before impact, while the Metrolink engineer never uses the brakes on his cart.
Location
The accident came after a freight train emerged from a 500-foot (150-meter-long) tunnel # just south of California State Route 118 near the intersection of Heather Lee Lane and Andora Avenue near the Chatsworth Hills Academy. The accident happened in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles located on the northwest bank of San Fernando Valley. Trains collided on the Metrolink Ventura County Line, part of Cutoff Montalvo, opened by the South Pacific Company on March 20, 1904, to improve the alignment of the Coastal Path. Metrolink has operated this line since purchasing it in the 1990s from the South Pacific (now owned by Union Pacific), which retains the tracking rights for shipping services.
Physical characteristics of trains
Both trains are in the same section of the single track that runs between the Chatsworth station (which is tracked twice) through the Santa Susana Pass. The line returns to the double track again as it enters the Simi Valley. The three tunnels under the pass are just wide enough to support one track, and it will be very expensive to widen it. This single-track section carries 24 passenger trains and 12 freight trains every day.
The railway signal system is designed to ensure that trains are waiting in the double-lane section while trains run in the other direction on a single track. The signal system was upgraded in the 1990s to support the Metrolink commuter rail service, and Richard Stanger, Metrolink's executive director in the early years of 1991 to 1998, said the system worked without problems in the past. Metrolink trains will usually wait at the Chatsworth station for Union Pacific freight trains every day to skip before continuing, unless freight trains are waiting in Chatsworth. Locations are not protected by catch points.
Maps 2008 Chatsworth train collision
Timeline
Events on September 12, 2008 leading to a collision (all local time):
Aftermath
Emergency response
The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) initially sent a machine company with a crew of four people to "physical rescue possibilities" at a nearby residence address in response to a 9-1-1 emergency call from home. The crew arrived at the address four minutes later, just before 16:30 PDT and accessed the scene by cutting the backyard fence. Upon arrival, the captain at the scene immediately summoned an additional five ambulances, then 30 fire engines, and after reaching the wreck he called every heavy search and rescue unit in town. Hundreds of emergency workers were eventually involved in rescue and recovery efforts, including 250 firefighters. Two Los Angeles firefighters received medals for risking their lives to enter a confined space with potentially toxic smoke and air, without their air jars, to rescue one of the freight trains engineers. LAPD Devonshire Division, Patrol Officer arrived at the scene shortly after the first LAFD Engine Company. When firefighters extinguished the burning diesel fuel that had spilled out of the freight machine, Patrol Officers entered damaged and smoke-filled trains to rescue/administer first aid to some of the passengers who were stranded on the upper deck due to their critical injuries. Two Officers received a medal, and two received praise and credited with potentially saving the lives of several injured passengers.
The event is operationally identified as "Chatsworth Incident" and has been reclassified as a "mass casualty incident". All six LAFD air ambulances were mobilized, along with six additional helicopters from the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The helicopter is requested under a mutual help arrangement. Overview of emergency and on-site treatment and hospitalization was initiated by the Los Angeles County Supervisor immediately after the event, and is expected to take 90 days to complete.
Victim
Twenty-five people were killed in the crash, including Sanchez engineer and two victims who died in the hospital in the days following the crash. This incident was the deadliest train accident in the history of Metrolink, and the worst in the United States since Big Bayou Canot trained the disaster in 1993.
A total of 135 others were reportedly injured, 46 of which were critical, with 85 wounded being transported to 13 hospitals and two transported by themselves. Air ambulance helicopters include 40 patients. LAFD, Captain Steve Ruda reported that the high number of seriously injured passengers burdened the emergency response capability in the area, and the patients were distributed to all 12 trauma centers in Los Angeles County. Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills cares for 17 patients, more than any other hospital.
Captain Ruda said his firefighters had never seen such a massacre. Austin Walbridge, a train passenger, told the TV news reporter that the railroad interior was "bloody, messy, just a disaster. The emergency responders described the victim as a crush-type injury victim. Dr. Amal K. Obaid, a trauma surgeon who practices at the USC University Hospital where several victims are treated, explains their injuries in more detail, "They have head injuries, some facial fractures, chest trauma, lung collapsed, broken ribs, pelvic fractures, broken arm and arm, skin and soft tissue injuries Some have blood in the brain. "
The Los Angeles County Coroner sets up an air-conditioned tent that serves as a temporary morgue on site. One of the unserved Officers of the Los Angeles Police Department was among the confirmed death toll, as did the Metrolink train engineer, an employee of Veolia Transport, the Metrolink contract operator. One of the dead passengers was a survivor of a train wreck at Glendale in 2005. Others have left by train since Metrolink was founded in 1992. Many victims are residents of Simi Valley and Moorpark in the suburbs on their way home from work in the Los Angeles area.
Four other crew members of two trains survived. The carrier and the freight trainer were trapped inside the main locomotive while engulfed in fire; firefighters who rescued the couple found they hit a thick glass of glass, unable to escape. The delivery crew also had a cyclist riding in a second locomotive that was injured in the accident.
The search for survivors ended shortly after 2:30 pm PDT on September 13, about 22 hours after the collision.
Service interruption
The disturbance interferes with the services at Pacific Surfliner and Coast Starlight . Amtrak canceled service at Pacific Surfliner between San Luis Obispo and Union Station in Los Angeles and Thruway Motorcoach bus transports Coastallight passengers from Union Station to Santa Barbara to catch the train. The Metrolink service at Ventura County Line was cut off north of Chatsworth, and all services resumed four days after the accident.
Investigation
Preliminary investigative controversy
Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell revealed a day after the crash that preliminary investigations of the delivery and computer records showed engineers from the Metrolink passenger train failing to stop the train for red rail signals, which indicated the train had no authority to continue on the main track. He was quoted as saying, "We do not know how that mistake happened, but this is what we believe happened, we believe it is our engineers who fail to stop signaling." Tyrrell says that if the engineer has obeyed the signal, the accident will not happen. But Los Angeles County Board of Trustees and Metrolink member Don Knabe said it was too early to blame engineers, speculating that "there's always a technical malfunction where... there's a green light both ways."
After the Metrolink board meeting two days after his statement, Tyrrell resigned. Tyrrell declared that he had stopped because the Metrolink Board's statement called the announcement premature and inappropriate; He argues that it is appropriate to come out in front of the story before the NTSB takes over the investigation. He stated that he requested and received authorization to make comments from David Solow, the chief executive of Metrolink. Solow insists that he gives the authorization, but says that, in hindsight, he will not grant permission. After his resignation, some good government supporters praised Tyrrell for his candor, including the head of public advocate with California Common Cause. The Los Angeles Times also published an editorial by columnist Patt Morrison sympathetic to Tyrrell's position, where he said, "I do not know the concept of how truth can become premature." The truth is the truth.
Official investigation
The NTSB leads an official inquiry to determine possible causes, but NTSB officials have not commented on the accident before the Metrolink statement. In the next news conference on the scene two hours after Tyrrell's comments, an NTSB official warned that the cause of the accident was still under investigation. NTSB studied data from railway event recorders, which have been found by NTSB researchers working on the scene. The Metrolink train has two data recorders, one badly damaged, and the freight train has data and video recorder. NTSB said it would collect other evidence and interview the witness to try to report officially within a year why the accident occurred.
The test of the railway signal system after the crash indicates it is functioning properly, and should show proper signal indication to the Metrolink train, with two yellow signals as the train approaches the Chatsworth station, and a red signal at the station's north switch. "We can say with confidence that the signal system is working," NTSB board members said at a press conference after the test. It focuses NTSB investigations on human factors.
Before releasing the crash site and enabling service recovery, NTSB also conducts the final visibility test. The identical Metrolink train and a pair of Union Pacific locomotives are united at the point of collision and slowly away from each other. The tests showed that railway engineers could not see each other for less than five seconds before the collision.
Survivors of the crew can not be interviewed by the NTSB immediately after the accident as they are still recovering from their injuries. NTSB can interview Metrolink conductors of recorded radio communications, which do not capture the necessary communications between the conductor and the engineer on the aspect displayed by the last two signals that the train passes before the accident occurs. He insists they are not calling the last two signals.
The NTSB also stated that the railway switch shows evidence of damage consistent with Metrolink passenger trains "running through" the point of the trailing switch when they are set to allow freight trains to continue into adjacent lanes, forcing them out of the way. "The switch bar is bent like a banana.This should be perfectly straight," according to NTSB officials. NTSB members in charge of the investigation team said they were also concerned about possible fatigue problems associated with the engineer's split shift. The engineer worked split shift of 11.5 hours with a 3.5 hour pause, leaving only nine hours of work between working days.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is also investigating to determine if any federal safety regulations are being violated. The California Public Utility Commission, the state agency responsible for regulating the railroad, also reports that it has ten researchers with a train experience working with NTSB, and will also investigate the issue of Tyrell's resignation.
Possible false green
Prior to the conclusion of an official inquiry, three witnesses advanced to say that they observed the signal being green when the Metrolink train left the Chatsworth station just before the collision. A newspaper reporter interviewed witnesses at the station, and made sure that the signals were visible from the station, and that witnesses could correctly identify the colors shown. A safety consultant said that although this type of signal failure is very rare, he has seen it twice before in his 13-year career as a locomotive engineer. The NTSB considers eyewitness account and, based on its test results on the signal system and distance between witnesses and signals, rejects it as "contrary to other evidence".
Text messaging
Local television news broke the story that Metrolink engineers exchanged short messages with teenage train fans while operating trains, a violation of Metrolink rules by agency. The last message received from the engineer, time stamped a minute before the collision, reportedly said, "yes... usually @ north of camarillo," apparently a reference to the city further down the line where engineers are expected to meet another train.
NTSB did not restore the cell phone engineers in the wreckage and said teenagers were working with the investigation, initially noting that similar rumors about an engineer using a cell phone from a recent investigation in Boston were unfounded. Upon receipt of an engineer's mobile phone record under a subpoena, NTSB confirmed that the engineer was sending an SMS while on duty, but has not correlated the message with an accident schedule. After completing the initial timeline, NTSB places the last text message sent by the engineer at 22 seconds before impact.
A NTSB representative declined to comment further on the initial timeline, which is still being refined by the investigator. Two University of Southern California academics used the information in the NTSB statement to determine that the last text message sent by the Metrolink train engineer would be sent a few seconds after it passed the last red signal. This will make the unconscious to be the impossible cause for this error, because engineers are able to write and send messages; instead a psychology professor from the University of Utah increases the likelihood that "inattentional blindness" causes engineers to fail to see the signal.
The day after the NTSB confirmed that the engineer was sending an SMS, and less than a week after the accident, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously issued an emergency order temporarily banning the use of mobile communications by training crew members, citing this accident and earlier Train Accident Fire City of San Francisco where carriage operators use cell phones. A week later, sending SMS while driving a car is banned in California, effective January 1, 2009.
There were no federal regulations prohibiting the use of telephones by rail crews at the time of the crash, but the NTSB had recommended the Federal Railroad Administration to address the issue in 2003, after concluding cell phone use by freight train engineers contributed to fatal heads. on a railroad crash in Texas in 2002. However, 19 days after the accident, the FRA administrator issued a No. Emergency Order. 26 which limits the use of "electronic or personal electronic devices" by employees of train operations.
On March 3, 2009, federal investigators issued a recording showing that railway engineer Robert M. Sanchez had allowed train enthusiasts to take a taxi a few days before the accident, and that he planned to let him run the train between the four stations on the night of the accident. "I'll do all the radio talks... you'll run the locomotive and I'll tell you how to do it," Sanchez wrote in one text. The records also show Sanchez has received two previous warnings from his superiors about inappropriate phone usage while in the control cabin.
The role of conductor
The operating rules for train with single engineer are all signals must be reported to the conductor. This allows the conductor to 'draw air' (applying the emergency brake) if the technician appears to be incapacitated for any reason. However, in this incident, according to the video data, the last two signals were not reported, nor did the conductor apply the brakes.
Unusually, the conductor tells the engineer that the initial signal is green, not vice versa.
NTSB conclusions and recommendations
On January 21, 2010, the NTSB issued a press release announcing its conclusions from an investigation into the collision. In its report, NTSB concluded that the cause of the accident was likely to result from the use of text messages by Metrolink while on duty, which caused the train to operate through a red signal to the upcoming Uni Pacific shipping lane. train. In addition, the Board cites the lack of positive train control on the Metrolink train as contributing factors. The investigation has led the NTSB to recommend that the federal government require the installation of video and audio recording equipment in all locomotives and train taxi operations, and to reaffirm its call for positive train control, which has been on the Council's Desire List since 1990.
Positive train control
Positive train control (PTC) is a functional requirements system for monitoring and controlling rail movements and is a type of rail protection system. Attention is focused immediately on the lack of PTC on equipment involved in the Chatsworth collision; Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph H. Boardman told reporters days after the accident that PTC "will stop the train before the collision". The National Transportation Safety Board member (NTSB) who led the investigation also said he was confident that such a system would "prevent this crash".
In 2008, Congress passed the 2008 Railway Enhancement Law in response to the accident. This requires the main channel of Class I Railroad with regular passenger and commuter passenger passenger service to fully implement PTC on December 31, 2015. By 2015, some railway lines are in close proximity to the application of PTC and request for renewal; the deadline is extended until 31 December 2018, subject to the extension of compliance by 31 December 2020 if the railway delivers plans to perform work on December 31, 2018. Failure to apply the PTC was previously cited by the Board as a contributing factor in derailing the Philadelphia 2015 train
Metrolink is the first commuting system to implement the technology, and is currently fully active on 341 miles of Metrolink's trackage. Regarding the 171 mile Metrolink line owned by the BNSF and UPRR delivery lines, the agency stated in 2017 that they are "working towards PTC interoperability".
Litigation
As a result of the provisions of the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997 (PL 105-134), there is a US $ 200 million limit on the aggregate of all claims of passenger damages in train accidents against passenger trains, including punitive damages. In dividing $ 200 million among 25 people killed and more than 100 injured in the Chatsworth case, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman marked the award as a "judicial triage", stating that victims were less than compensated for at least $ 64 million, and admits that the award is unlikely to cover future medical expenses.
See also
- The Bad Aibling railway accident, a 2016 accident in Germany caused when the dispatcher was interrupted by a game on his cell phone.
- List of American train accidents
- List of train accidents (2000-2009)
References
External links
- Audio and video from KNX 1070 AM
- A Brief Description of the Direct Collision Between Metrolink Train 111 and the Pacific Union Train, 12 September 2008, California Public Utilities Commission
- List of victims from Los Angeles Times
- Los Angeles Times full coverage page
- Gallery from KABC-TV
- Gallery from Los Angeles Times
- Gallery from Traverse Legal, PLC
- NTSB report
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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