(The Pensacola News-Journal posted the following story by Troy Moon on its website on September 21.)
PENSACOLA, Fla. — Daisy Netters has trouble remembering things. She`ll get in the car and forget where she was going. Or why she was heading out of her Century home. That`s if she can remember where her car keys were to begin with.
“I know I`ll have to stop driving soon,” said Netters, 80. “I just can`t remember like I used to. I tell people my brain is damaged. It`s been damaged ever since then.”
“Then” was the dark morning of Sept. 22, 1993, when Amtrak`s Sunset Limited derailed over the remote Big Bayou Canot 10 miles northeast of Mobile. Three engines and four railroad cars plunged into the water at 2:54 a.m., just after a barge lost in thick fog struck a railroad bridge piling.
Forty-two of 210 passengers were killed, as were five crew members. More than 100 passengers were injured. The tragedy remains the worst accident in Amtrak`s history.
And Netters, one of six Northwest Florida residents who survived the plunge into that murky bayou, is glad she doesn`t remember much. Bus she will never forget the date.
“It will be 10 years on the 22nd of this month,” said Netters, whose right wrist was broken and whose memory – fine before the accident – hasn`t been the same since. “I won`t forget that. I knew it was coming up. But what happened that morning? I only remember what people told me.”
The train was on its way to Pensacola when the accident occurred. Most passengers were asleep, waking only when the metal screeched and the train cars plunged into the water.
Passengers escaped from burning cars into fuel-covered water, many clinging to floating logs or whatever debris they could grab ahold of. There were sobs, screams, cries in the dark.
Netters, who is unable to swim, was found holding onto a log just 15 feet from one of the burning train cars.
Robert Zimmershed, then a barge fleetman for Scott Paper Co. near Mobile, was notified of the accident and moved his barge toward the scene to assist in rescue operations. Zimmershed, who is credited with rescuing nearly two dozen people, found her and hoisted her onto the barge before she was taken by helicopter to the hospital.
“He had to get help to pry my hands off him,” Netters said. “They told me I was holding on to him for my life. I wouldn`t let go.”
Netters, Carole and George and Carole Simpson of Midway, Mary and Rubin O`Donovan of Brownsville and David Jordan of Molino were the only Northwest Florida residents on the train, and all survived. George Simpson and the O`Donovans have died in recent years.
None of the survivors has been on a train since the accident. But a few say they`re trying not to let fear haunt them.
“I`d probably ride (a train) again,” said Jordan, 64, a 20-year Air Force veteran who served during the Korean War. “I just haven`t had occasion to. Want to fund a trip?”
Jordan gave a little chuckle. But the ghosts of the accident still haunt him.
He was returning from a visit with his daughter and grandson in California. His wife made the trip with him but decided to stay a few extra days out west. So Jordan traveled alone. He met two people who would stay in his mind forever.
“The hardest thing about the wreck,” Jordan said, his voice softening, “was, well, I met a young lady on the train with a baby of three or four months. Her husband was stationed in the Navy in California, and she was heading east to stay with relatives. They both perished. That still bothers me a lot. The rest I can think about and not get too upset. But not them. They`ve stuck with me.”
Jordan received counseling in the months after the accident. He even watched a videotape of the rescue hundreds of times to help him come to grips with the horror of the accident.
He suffered minor injuries, including a broken rib. But it`s the mental scars that heal the slowest.
“It`s still there in my mind, and I still think about it,” Jordan said. “It`s not the serious problem for me that it was before. But I haven`t forgotten.”
How could he?
Jordan had to punch out a window in the partially submerged train car to escape. He swam 100 feet to shore and then collapsed in exhaustion.
“There was fire behind us, and diesel fuel was flying everywhere,” he said. “It was hitting me like raindrops.”
Carole Simpson, 65, said she did not fully realize the horror of the scene until she was airlifted out of the area by a Coast Guard helicopter, along with her husband, George, who died two years ago.
“That was the really traumatic part,” she said. “Watching it from the air was a real shock to me. It was total devastation. Like someone had taken a toy train and just thrown it. And there was fire everywhere.”
Simpson and her husband were asleep when the wreck occurred. She said she remembers waking up “to the terrible sounds of crashing and the feeling I was falling.”
“We climbed out the window into the water, and we could hear people on the bank shouting for us to come that way,” she said. “We started swimming, and George had a heart attack. That was the worst moment for me – him having a heart attack. And the water was thick with diesel fuel. I thought the water was going to catch on fire.”
More than 100 lawsuits were filed after the accident, most of them settled out-of-court.
A multiagency task force concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing concerning the wreck. But the National Transportation Safety Board released a report blaming the tugboat pilot for the wreck and calling for tougher training and licensing as well as sweeping inspections of rail and highway bridges vulnerable to marine collisions.
“There were settlements eventually,” Jordan said. “There was some financial compensation that took care of medical expenses and some of the things I lost.”
But one thing some of the survivors say they lost forever was a sense of security.
Netters said she can barely handle hearing a train since the accident.
“It used to tear my nerves to see or hear a train,” she said. “It was such a horrible thing that happened. But I`m blessed, I surely am. Because I`m here today. The Lord was exceptionally good to me. But I hurt for the people who died that day.”