Train hits small London snow plow, kills man
LONDON, ONT. The death of a London sidewalk snowplow operator, killed at a notorious railway crossing when a freight train struck his plow Tuesday, stunned witnesses and drew an outpouring of grief from city officials.
Reacting to what’s believed to be the first such death of its kind in London, Mayor Matt Brown and city manager Martin Hayward extended their condolences to the family of the unnamed city contractor in a joint statement.
“We are shocked and deeply saddened by this event,” they said. “Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the individual.”
Coun. Josh Morgan weighed in on social media.
“This is a horrible tragedy,” he wrote on Twitter, “our thoughts should be with this person’s loved ones today.”
The collision at a rail crossing one expert considers among the city’s most dangerous occurred about 9:40 a.m., just after rushhour, on a day when London was still digging out from a massive storm a day earlier that cancelled school buses and snarled traffic, leaving high snowbanks everywhere.
Witnesses recall the moments of panic watching the slow-moving, Bobcat-like machine enter the path of the lumbering freight train, which was travelling east near York and Colborne streets in the city centre before the collision that threw the snowplow 50 metres from the crossing.
“It was just a blur,” said Caden Lannon, one of two members of a surveying crew working on the northeast side of the tracks.
“You wanted to help ... but it was too late.”
Lannon said the sidewalk plow — which had a snowblower attachment on the front — was inching across the tracks when it was hit.
The train clipped the front of the plow, he said, ripping the snowblower from the cab.
The white plow machine came to rest on the south side of the tracks, north of Colborne Street.
The attachment landed on the north side of the track, several metres from the rest of the vehicle.
A driver stopped at the crossing called 911. “It’s really sad, upsetting,” Lannon said.
The unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene.
The crash came in a thaw that followed a weeks-long deep freeze, packed with extreme cold alerts, in London and across Southwestern Ontario.
Last week, an elderly couple from Huron County died in the severe cold outside their farmhouse.
Tuesday’s death at the rail crossing was the second fatality there in recent years.
Cyclist William Seely, 24, was killed when he was struck by a westbound freight train on July 3, 2013. The woman he was with was seriously injured.
In March 2014, a 59-year-old man was hurt after he was hit by a freight train while walking across the same tracks.
The crossing was ranked among the most high-risk in London by rail safety expert Richard Plokhaar during a safety audit of 65 London’s train crossings.
He had called for better signage and pavement markings for pedestrians to make the crossing safer.
Unlike the rail crossing on Richmond Street south of Piccadilly Street, the Colborne Street crossing doesn’t have arms that block the sidewalk — a feature Plokhaar said would protect pedestrians.
On the roadway, the automated crossing ’s lights, bells and crossing arms were working properly, a CN spokesperson wrote in an email.
The train’s horn blared for “about 30 seconds” before the crash, one witness told Postmedia.
“That’s what caught my attention,” the unidentified witness said.
The circumstances surrounding the crash, including why the plow entered the path of train, are still under investigation.
London police are asking any witnesses to come forward.
Two Ontario Labour Ministry inspectors — the ministry investigates workplace deaths — were sent to the scene early Tuesday. The ministry is trying to determine whether the contractor’s death falls under their jurisdiction, a spokesperson said.
The stopped locomotive snarled north and southbound traffic along the rail line from Ridout Street to Adelaide Street for several hours, but was moved from the scene shortly after noon.
The morning crash delayed the Windsor-to-Toronto Via passenger train for several hours, a spokesperson for the passenger railway said.