Focus of NTSB investigation into deadly Missouri train crash likely these two things
The steep grade and condition of the rural Missouri railroad crossing where a Chicago-bound Amtrak train struck a dump truck Monday will be the focus of the investigation into the deadly crash, according to a national transportation expert.
Mary Schiavo, former U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general, told The Star on Tuesday that investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board will be examining those issues as they search for why Amtrak’s Southwest Chief slammed into the truck as the train was traveling through Missouri on the way to Chicago.
Four people were killed — three from the train and one in the truck — and about 150 injured when the train derailed after hitting the truck southwest of Mendon in Chariton County. There are stop signs at the crossing, but no signals or cross arms, and residents in the area said Monday the grade was too steep and dangerous.
“I think the real problem is going to be the gradient and the condition of the crossing,” Schiavo said. “It was a very steep gradient going up.”
Schiavo said the Federal Railroad Administration issues national standards on train crossing gradients.
“But those are new standards and these are old crossings,” she said, “so most states have plans over time to remediate the bad gradient crossings.”
There are approximately 3,800 public highway-rail crossings in Missouri, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Office of Multimodal Operations, which oversees rail services in the state.
Each year from 2017 to 2021, MoDOT has improved the safety features at about 20 of those crossings. The Mendon crossing is on the list of proposed improvements.
“Accidents happen at places on lists,” Schiavo said.
Nearly half of public train crossings in Missouri are not equipped with active warning devices such as bells, flashing lights and gates, according to a MoDOT report.
“Only the crossings with extreme amounts of train and vehicle traffic or other sight distance problems will receive lights/gates because the need is great,” the agency wrote on its website.
Residents near the crash site Monday also said the thick brush near the crossing made it difficult to see a train approaching.
Schiavo said the brush “is an issue for the railroad, the track owner, to address.” However, she added, “the state can stay on their case to make it free of obstructions.”
While the railroad track owner, BNSF Railway, is responsible for the upkeep of the track, Schiavo said, federal regulations say that Amtrak is liable for those on its train.
“No matter who owns the track, for injuries and deaths of passengers on board, Amtrak will have to stand the loss,” she said.
“We had a very similar situation in South Carolina a couple years back,” she said. “Amtrak was not at fault. But Amtrak had to stand liable for the passenger cases because of federal regulation. And that’s part of the deal for Amtrak to travel over these tracks.”
Another issue, Schiavo said, is that Amtrak travels faster than the freight trains that run on the tracks.
“And they can. It’s legal,” she said. “It just depends if they were going the right speed for this track. So the truck driver maybe saw the train and assumed it was a freight train that might have been going half the speed, so he may have misjudged the amount of time needed to get across.”
Schiavo said the NTSB will have information on the train’s speed from the black box as early as today, along with plenty of other details.
“Because of the black box, they’ll know exactly how fast it was going, when it sounded the horn, when it applied the brakes,” she said. “So they’ll know when the train driver saw the truck. And they have an eyewitness, so the eyewitness will be able to say what the driver did. Did he stop or did he have to get up steam to get over the steep gradient? So, you know, on this one, the NTSB is fortunate. They’re going to have a lot of evidence.
“They’ll have this one solved really quickly.”
The Star’s Natalie Wallington contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 28, 2022 at 11:58 AM.
