(The following story by Greg Cunningham appeared on the Amarillo Globe-News website on March 2. Terry Briggs is Chairman of the BLET Texas State Legislative Board.)
AMARILLO, Texas — Roaring down the tracks at 50 mph, hauling several thousand tons of freight cars, you’d think falling asleep would be the last thing a train crew would have to worry about.
But some Union Pacific employees from Texas suspect that’s what happened just prior to a fatal train wreck Feb. 21 in Carrizozo, N.M., and they blame industry practices that result in overworked, under-rested engineers.
A Dalhart-based engineer who asked to remain anonymous to protect his job with Union Pacific said his fellow union members are deeply concerned about the issue, but attempts to find other engineers willing to speak on the record were unsuccessful.
Officials from Union Pacific admit that they are short-handed right now, but say they are following all laws that regulate time off for railroad employees while trying to fill in the gaps with new hiring.
“There’s no set scheduling in transportation industry-related work,” said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis. “We try to help employees with ways to manage fatigue, but irregularly scheduled hours are nothing new. It’s been that way since this industry started.”
Terry Briggs, chairman of the Texas State Legislative Board for the Teamsters, said every railroad company battles the sleep deprivation problem, but things have been especially difficult with Union Pacific.
“The danger is very real here. A typical coal train would weigh in excess of 18,000 tons and can do an amazing amount of damage. They also haul a tremendous amount of hazardous material through Amarillo. You need somebody that’s alert and rested and can protect the public.”
The fatal train wreck killed Anthony Rodella, 57, and Jeffrey Bohler, 32, both of El Paso. The two men were crewing an eastbound train that swiped the side of a westbound train on a side rail near Carrizozo.
Officials from Union Pacific, the National Transportation Safety Board and the engineers’ union all said they could not comment on what caused the wreck.
Preliminary information from the trains’ data recorders indicate that Rodella and Bohler made no adjustments to the controls of the eastbound train for several miles prior to the wreck and did not respond to two slow-down signals and a stop signal.
Federal regulations require that no member of a train crew be worked more than 12 hours, and each employee must have 10 hours off between such shifts. If the employee works less than 12 hours, only eight hours of rest are required.
No one contacted for this article has accused Union Pacific of violating that law, but engineers said that Union Pacific’s understaffed, highly unpredictable schedules make it hard for train crews to plan for sleep.
The engineer from Dalhart, who used to work with both of the men who died, said he had found out enough from talking to friends and family about the wreck to suspect that lack of sleep may have played a part in the accident.
Bryan Cartall, a San Antonio attorney who represents the Rodella family, also said exhaustion may have played a part, although several other factors were present as well.
Rodella got off a shift early Feb. 20 and was expecting to be off until well into the next day, so he decided to stay up to spend some time with his family, rather than going straight to sleep. That decision left him with little or no sleep when he got called in early for a shift that started just after midnight Feb. 21, Cartall said.
“I think it was a very preventable accident,” Cartall said. “It’s too early to say for sure at this point, but there is a high likelihood that fatigue may have been involved in some way.
“Fatigue has been a problem forever. The carriers know about it, and the carriers are not doing a thing to help these guys out.”
Union Pacific officials have recognized that fatigue is a problem and have taken strong steps to counter it, Davis said.
“Union Pacific led the country in the first development of fatigue management in our industry, back in the mid-90s,” Davis said. “It’s something we’ve led not only in this country, but also internationally.”
Davis said the company complies with all regulations regarding time off and tries to help its employees with programs on how to deal with the constantly shifting schedules inherent to the railroad business. The company is also aggressively hiring new employees, he said.
“This year, we’re looking to hire 3,000 (employees),” Davis said. For the next several years, we’ll probably hire 2,000 a year.”
Briggs said the railroad can actually adhere to federal regulations while still making it hard on its employees with lack of sleep.
Train crews work long days, often much of it unpaid as they wait for crews to relieve them after reaching the maximum 12 hours in a shift, Briggs said.
Even when an engineer gets off the train in a timely manner, the eight or 10 hours of rest is not sufficient, Briggs said. Many engineers have to drive an hour to get home, eat dinner, spend time with the family, then go to bed.
The railroad calls engineers anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours before their shift starts, so that eight or 10 hours can rapidly get cut down to only a couple of hours of sleep, Briggs said.
“The effects of fatigue are cumulative,” Briggs said. “The human body can’t keep going through this day after day.
With both sides recognizing exhaustion and understaffing as major problems in the industry, the question becomes, what can be done about it?
Perhaps the federal entity that regulates the railroads can come up with a middle ground solution that both sides can agree on.
Warren Flatau, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said the FRA has long tried to get industry and labor involved in an initiative called the North American Rail Alertness Partnership. NARAP is a comprehensive set of fatigue management plans that could satisfy everybody’s needs, but so far, the FRA has not found any takers for its program.
“The agency is very proud of the work that’s been done,” Flatau said. “We have asked the railroads, in cooperation with rail labor, to develop and adopt these comprehensive rail management plans, and they have not. We have pushed this and pushed this and pushed this, but so far neither side has gotten on board.”