ABOUT TIME WE WAKE UP
THE ENGINEERS at the helm of two commuter trains that crashed into their stations suffered from severe sleep apnea, according to federal investigators.
The diagnoses for the engineers on the NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road trains were detailed in investigative reports from the National Transportation Safety Board made public Thursday.
Both engineers — Thomas Gallagher at NJ Transit and Michael Bakalo at LIRR — recounted similar stories leading to their crashes.
Neither recalls the trains speeding down the tracks or the moment that they crashed into the stations.
The Sept. 29, 2016, morning rush-hour crash at Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey killed one woman, who was struck with debris while standing on a platform.
In Brooklyn, during the morning rush on Jan. 4, an LIRR train barreled into the end of a track at Atlantic Terminal.
More than 200 people were injured in the crashes.
The NTSB drafted a special investigative report on both crashes because they were so similar. The agency is holding a Feb. 6 board meeting in Washington, D.C., on the crashes.
In the NJ Transit collision, Gallagher recalled traveling within the limit at 10 mph as he traveled down track 5 — six minutes late — blowing the train’s horn and ringing its bell.
“The next thing I remember was a loud bang,” he told investigators.
Gallagher, 49, was supposed to have gotten a sleep apnea screen as part of his annual medical exam, but NJ Transit told investigators it couldn’t find that form from his July 2016 doctor’s visit. Gallagher (inset top) reported that the doctor “verbally asked me a bunch of questions.”
Gallagher is a “poster boy for sleep apnea,” his attorney Jack Arseneault told the Daily News. NJ Transit should have gotten a better screening during his annual physical, where he was found fit for duty, the lawyer said.
NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder declined to comment on Gallagher’s case.
During the LIRR crash, Bakalo, 51, was also working with undiagnosed sleep apnea.
“I remember coming into the platform — and then, honestly, that’s all I can recall,” Bakalo (inset bottom) told investigators at an LIRR office in Jamaica, Queens.
The MTA lacked a mandatory sleep apnea screening at the time of the LIRR crash, even though the disorder was to blame for a Metro-North engineer in 2013 speeding into a track curve at Spuyten Duyvil, in the Bronx, causing a fatal derailment.
In the weeks after the Brooklyn crash, the MTA awarded a contract for the expanded sleep apnea testing program for LIRR and NYC Transit workers.
To date, 7,954 workers have been screened, making up 45% of the workforce that must be examined. Of those tested, 1,799 got a referral for further examination, according to the MTA.
“The MTA has embarked on the earliest and most aggressive sleep apnea screening program of transportation workers in the nation,” LIRR spokesman Aaron Donovan said.