The Big Bayou Canot rail accident was a derailing of the Amtrak train at CSXT bridge Big Bayou Canot in southwestern Alabama, USA, on September 22, 1993. This was due to the displacement of the range and deformation of the rails when the crane of a ship a heavy barge collided with the bridge eight minutes earlier. Forty-seven were killed and 103 wounded. To date, it is the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history and the worst railroad disaster in the United States since 1958 Newark Bay, a New Jersey train accident in which 48 lives were lost.
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The unfinished CSX Transportation swing bridge over Big Bayou Canot in southwestern Alabama (about 10 miles northeast of Mobile) was attacked at about 2:45 am by a barge driven by a towing vessel Mauvilla (owned and operated by Warrior and Chickasaw Bay Navigation, Alabama), whose pilots became confused in the thick fog. The collision forced the unsafe end of the bridge to reach a distance of about three feet, to the next train line, and swung the trajectory firmly.
At 2:53 am, the Amtrak Train Sunset Limited , is driven by three locomotives (one GE Genesis P40DC number 819 ahead, and two EMD F40PHs, number 262 and 312) en route from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida with 220 passengers and crew, crossing the bridge at about 70 miles per hour (110 km/h) and slipping in the freshness. The first of his three locomotives crashed into the span of refugees, causing the part of the bridge to collapse into the water beneath. The main locomotive pinned its own nose into a canal bank, and two other locomotives, along with luggage cars, dormitory cars, and two of six passenger cars, fell into the water. The locomotive fuel tank, each of which has several thousand gallons of diesel fuel, crashed by a collision, resulting in massive fuel spills and fires. Forty-seven people, 42 of whom were passengers, dead, many because of drowning, others because of the fire/smoke inhaled. Another 103 were injured. The four crew members were unharmed. At the time of derailment, the main locomotive, number 819, has been operating with Amtrak for only twenty days.
Immediately before the accident, Mauvilla had gone wrong and entered an unreachable water channel leading to the bridge. The tower pilot, Willie Odom, was not well trained on how to read his radar and hence, because of the very poor visibility in fog and lack of experience, did not realize that he was off track. The boat also has no compass and water chart. Odom believed that he was still on the River Moves and had identified the bridge on the radar as another tugboat. He was not found criminally responsible for the accident.
The bridge range has actually been designed to rotate so it can be transformed into a swing bridge by adding the appropriate equipment. No such repentance has ever been done, but that range has not been adequately secured against unwanted movements. Despite the displacement of the bridge, the continuous welded rail does not break. As a result, the path circuit that controls the bridge approach block signal remains intact and the nearest signal continues to display a clear (green) aspect. If one of the rails has been disconnected by the displacement of the bridge, the track circuit will open, causing the approach signal to display the stop aspect (red) and the previous signal is an indication of the amber approach. This may have given Amtrak engineers enough time to stop the train or at least reduce speed in an attempt to minimize the severity of the crash.
Fatal delay
The episode of the documentary series National Geographic Channel Seconds of the Disaster checks the accident. In addition to corroborating the findings of an official accident report, the program noted that the train had been delayed in New Orleans, Louisiana, with the repair of air conditioning units and toilets. This makes the train half an hour late from schedule. If it were not for this delay, Sunset Limited would pass the Big Bayou Canot bridge 20 minutes before the bridge was hit by a barge.
Maps Big Bayou Canot rail accident
Aftermath
As a result of the investigation of this accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made a series of comprehensive recommendations, on 19 September 1994, to the US Department of Transportation, US Army Engineers Corps, US Coast Guard, National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) Emergency Federal, The American Waterways Operators, Inc., Soldiers & amp; The Gulf Navigation Company, the American Railroad Association, and the American Short Line Train Association.
Following the recommendation to maintain passenger onboard records, Amtrak now lists the passengers electronically.
The accident, and damage to the bridge, made Amtrak unable to offer services between New Orleans and Florida. The Sunset Limited is operated from Los Angeles to New Orleans as before, and the east service of New Orleans is listed as "temporarily suspended". However, the service is not restored when the line is fixed, although the Amtrak route map shows routes between New Orleans and Jacksonville for years afterwards. The route was revived, but then fell again after Hurricane Katrina. The Amtrak map continues to illustrate the route between New Orleans and Jacksonville as "Suspended Services".
See also
- List of bridge failures
References
External links
- Holloway, David Mobile Press-Register 200th Anniversary: ​​Sunset Sunset The memory of a damaged train has not diminished with the passage of time on al.com, 1 July 2013. Accessed June 3, 2014
- Sproul, R. C. Train Accident Records eyewitness afterwards, on the Ligonier Ministries blog. Retrieved June 3, 2014
- Summary and photo at Trainweb.org. Retrieved June 3, 2014
- Demonstration of accident-causing graphics at TMBA Inc Animation Studio, New York. Retrieved June 3, 2014
- US. Coast Guard: Short Films Aerial and Boat Scenes Amtrak Train Derailment, Mobile, Alabama (1993) available for free download on the Internet Archive
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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