Probe examines whether Amtrak conductor was distracted.
Investigators are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding train plunged off an overpass, killing at least three people, was distracted by the presence of an employee-intraining next to him in the locomotive, a federal official said Tuesday.
The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators want to know whether the engineer lost “situational awareness” because of the second person in the cab.
Preliminary information indicated that the emergency brake on the Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state went off automatically and was not manually activated by the engineer, National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said.
The train was hurtling at 80 mph in a 30 mph zone Monday morning when it ran off the rails along a curve south of Seattle, sending some of its cars plummeting onto an interstate highway below, Dinh-Zarr said, citing data from the locomotive’s event recorder.
Skid marks — so-called “witness marks” — from the train’s wheels show where it left the track, she added.
Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to derail and that it was too early in the investigation to conclude why it was going so fast.
Three people where killed and more than 100 injured when one of two engines and 12 cars derailed, many of them tumbling onto a busy interstate highway below.
As rain poured down Tuesday, cranes moved in to clear the damaged cars from Interstate 5, one of the busiest highways on the West Coast, which authorities said may remain closed for several days.
NTSB officials said that investigators had not spoken with the train crew and they were uncertain whether the crew was familiar with the speed limits in the zone. The train was making its inaugural run on a 14.5-mile stretch of recently refurbished track.
Two of the three people who died Monday were identified as Zack Willhoite and Jim Hamre, both train buffs who were eager to be aboard the inaugural run of the Amtrak train over the new route.
If the automatic braking system known as positive train control (PTC) had been operating, sensors along the track bed would have slowed the train before it entered the left-hand curve where it derailed, and the fatal wreck could have been avoided, investigators said.
“It can prevent collision,” said Deborah A.P. Hersman, former chairman of the NTSB and now head of the National Safety Council. “This technology has been proven. And each year we delay the mandate to put it on these routes is another year that passengers and communities are at risk.”
Congress initially took action after a 2008 collision of a commuter train and a Union Pacific freight locomotive that killed 25 people and injured 135 in Chatsworth, Calif. At that time, Congress mandated that all railroads have PTC installed by the end of 2015.
Although the Federal Railroad Administration pressed the railroads to complete the PTC system, the railroads told Congress in 2015 that PTC technology was too complex and the $14.7 billion cost to equip freight and commuter lines was prohibitive.
Congress, which has received $56 million in campaign contributions from the railroads since 1990, relented. The lawmakers voted to extend the PTC deadline until 2018 and left open the possibility they might grant a further extension until 2020.
“The shameful part, the disappointing part, is that positive train control should have been implemented nationwide long ago, and it hasn’t been,” DinhZarr said Tuesday. “That’s one reason people have been losing their lives.”
SoundTransit, which owns the track on which the Amtrak train was operating Monday, planned to comply with the congressional mandate and install PTC sensors next year. Although Amtrak trains are equipped with PTC, the Washington State Department of Transportation said the necessary trackside sensors to enable it were not yet in place.
“It is now the end of 2017 and we still don’t have positive train control protecting people on these passenger routes,” Hersman said. “And there really is no reason not to move forward with positive train control.”
Willhoite was an IT specialist at Pierce Transit, which said in a statement: “He will be sincerely missed. Our thoughts are with Zack’s family, as well as the families of the other victims, during this very difficult time.”
The death of Hamre, a former Washington State Department of Transportation employee, was confirmed by the group All About Washington, on whose board he served. Hamre posted photos on
Facebook on Friday of the Amtrak train pulling into a station on the old coastal scenic route where the train used to run.
Both men were passionate advocates for passenger railroad.
“Jim was among the country’s most respected and effective rail advocates, and a good friend and mentor to me,” said Rail Passengers Association President Jim Mathews. “Both Jim and Zack have been advocates of transit and passenger rail for decades, and we can’t thank them enough for their work.”
Amtrak was running what railroaders call a push-pull operation, with a locomotive at either end of the 12-passenger cars. Dinh-Zarr said the data recorder had been retrieved from the engine that was at the tail end of the train.
A second data recorder, this one from the lead locomotive, was found Tuesday, and from that investigators were able to determine that the emergency break was automatically engaged and not activated by the engineer. Surveillance cameras from onboard the train are being sent to laboratories to try to extract video footage, Dinh-Zarr said.