(The following story by Alison Bath appeared on the Shreveport Times website on August 11. Connell Jackson is a member of BLET Division 632 in Minden, La.)
SHREVEPORT, La. — Every time he gets behind the wheel of his car, Connell Jackson sees the face of the man he watched die.
“Whenever I fasten my seat belt, I can see him … falling over in the seat, gagging,” said Jackson, a Kansas City Southern Railway locomotive engineer. “It’s hard to live with.”
Even though it was about 13 years ago and the only fatal crash Jackson has witnessed in his 29-year railroad career, the accident still plays out in his mind.
“You never get over it,” he said.
Jackson is one of thousands of local train workers who all too often witness firsthand the horrifying results of train-vehicle collisions.
It was fellow KCS crew members who first saw the body of a mother lying in the grass, heard the whimpering of her infant daughter and witnessed the woman’s toddler son trying to get up after the three were thrown from their car as a result of a 2005 Oil City crash.
The woman and baby, and an adult friend trapped in the car, were killed. The 2-year-old boy survived.
“We’ve all been on the end of these things … they never come out good,” said Dennis Marzec, KCS general director for safety and operating practices.
In 2007, there were 121 highway/rail accidents in Louisiana leaving 14 people dead and another 50 injured. As of May, 38 crashes at train crossings throughout the state have claimed the lives of two people and injured 10 more, The Times’ analysis of the most recently available Federal Railroad Administration data showed.
Those accidents exact an emotional toll on train crew members, who often are among the first to aid victims, said Union Pacific Railroad spokesman Harry Stewart.
UP trains were involved in 42 crossing crashes in 2007 throughout the state that killed nine and injured 15. Nationwide, the railroad was involved in 540 crossing accidents the same year that claimed 77 lives and injured 219, according to Federal Railroad Administration statistics.
“Some guys are … torn up because they are involved in an incident with a car,” said Stewart, manager of employee support services, which oversees the company’s peer support network — a group of about 300 volunteers throughout the country who offer help to crew members involved in crashes.
“The critical time (for workers) is (from) the realization the incident is about to happen to the moment it does happen and then to the aftermath they go through,” Stewart said. “Being through that is kind of tough on people.”
Stewart couldn’t say how many workers take advantage of UP’s peer support network, but he did note volunteers contact about 25 to 30 percent of those involved in crashes.
That support usually consists of a phone call or “wellness check” to an engineer, conductor or other employee involved in a crash.
The volunteer doesn’t offer counseling or advice but rather initiates a conversation to gauge a worker’s emotional status, Stewart said.
“They listen for things so they can see if there is a problem,” said Stewart, an engineer for 31 years. “They are trained to listen for certain things (such as a worker being) overly emotional or reclusive.”
Not all employees want or need to talk, but those who do find the experience liberating. Professional counseling services also are available, he said.
“The more you talk about the incident “» the more you relieve yourself of that baggage,” Stewart said.
During the course of a day, engineers such as Jackson and other crew members can witness drivers who don’t see or hear a train’s approach or ignore warning signals and end up on the tracks in front of their trains. More often than not the near mishaps remain just that.
Morning and evening commute times, when traffic often is at a peak, seem to be worse, Jackson said.
“I just hope they make it,” said Jackson of what goes through his mind when a car appears on the tracks in front of the locomotive he is operating. “Hopefully, they learn from (the near hit) and don’t do it anymore.”
It’s a situation train crews can’t control.
Locomotives weigh at least 350,000 pounds — a train carrying dozens of cars can top out at several million pounds. Stopping that weight, moving as little as five or a much as 55 miles an hour, isn’t easy for a train’s air brake system.
Even when crews spot a potential collision or someone on the tracks and try to stop, it can be as much as a mile or more before a train comes to a complete rest.
In a 2007 Ruston accident that claimed the life of a 19-year-old college student, the lead locomotive of the train was found nearly three-quarters of a mile from the crossing where it collided with the sports car in which the young woman was riding.
“You don’t want to take anyone’s life,” said KSC conductor Jason Edwards, who has witnessed many “near hits,” including one driver who stopped on the tracks and narrowly avoided a crash by backing the vehicle up just seconds before the locomotive came through a crossing.
“We’re just trying to do our job. People get so in a hurry — they won’t stop. They pile up on the crossing (waiting for a traffic light) and we can’t do anything about it.”
Edwards has only worked for KCS for about three years but already has witnessed a fatal crash that killed a man who “pulled in front of the train and his vehicle wrapped around the engine.
“You don’t want to see nothing like that,” Edwards said. “You hope and pray somebody survived.”
The looks on victims’ faces before a crash often haunt crew members. In one recent case, a crew operating a train at night was profoundly affected by a woman seen standing in the tracks — her image illuminated by the locomotive’s headlight, Stewart said.
“They have a belief the individual … is looking directly at them,” Stewart said. “It looks like they are giving eye contact with them but the person is looking at the train.”
In the case of the woman, no body was found. Investigators don’t know what happened but theorize it might have been an attempted suicide or someone trying to scare the crew.
Often pranksters will lay scarecrows or other items that appear to be a body on the tracks, Stewart said.
“To the guys that play chicken, it’s fun,” he said. “To the crews that are involved in it, it’s very hard.”
Stewart said peer counseling helps crews come to grips with what happened and understand that they weren’t at fault.
“They were a part of the incident but they were not the cause of the incident,” he said.