(The following article by Tim Rowden and Patricia Rice was posted on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on September 29.)
BLACKWELL, Mo. — Tonya Brown and some fellow New Orleans evacuees feared they were headed toward another disaster.
As Amtrak’s Texas Eagle rumbled through southern Jefferson County toward San Antonio about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, the train hit rocks, apparently from a rock
slide.
Brown, 22, a hair dresser, felt the jolt as she was saying her evening prayers. Her two children, Jeremiah, 7, and Tamiah, 17 months, were asleep on the seats beside her.
The engine flipped over on its side. Six passenger cars derailed but remained upright.
“There was a squeaky sound, a big boom and then I saw lights,” Brown said. “I just prayed that people would be patient and not get upset like what happened in the Superdome.”
While no one was seriously injured in the crash, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari
said a passenger and crew member remained hospitalized in satisfactory condition Thursday.
At least seven passengers were Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans
seeking refuge in Texas.
Last month, Brown and her family fled their home in New Orleans’ 9th Ward in a five-car convoy, finding refuge with relatives in Wentzville. Then, Hurricane Rita reflooded her street and she decided to use the money she had received from the federal government to buy Amtrak tickets on the Texas Eagle to Dallas, where her mother had found housing.
Magliari said Amtrak chartered buses for some of the passengers and planned to take those who still wanted to travel by rail to St. Louis to catch the next Texas Eagle to San Antonio. He said the tracks at the derailment site were scheduled to reopen Thursday night.
Praise for responders
Many passengers had high praise for the more than 200 first responders who arrived at the crash site. At least 10 fire and ambulance districts converged on the scene.
“They did a great job on the triage,” said Lynne Haman, 64, a retired paramedic from Harbert in southwestern Michigan.
She and her husband, Jon, a retired firefighter, were asleep in the train’s reclined chairs, three cars behind the engine, when the jolt awakened them.
Police said 26 passengers were taken to Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Crystal City.
Hospital spokesman Chris Berra said most were treated for minor injuries and released.
School buses took passengers to the De Soto Fire Department, where they were served coffee and snacks. Many slept on the fire house floor until about 3 a.m., when they were bused to the Holiday Inn Express in Festus.
The rock slide may have been caused by heavy rain that pounded the area Wednesday, but authorities said it was too early to tell.
“It’s a possibility that weather played a role,” said Capt. Ralph Brown, a spokesman for the Jefferson County sheriff’s office.
Blackwell is in a remote part of southern Jefferson County, a hilly area marked by red clay and rocks near where Jefferson, Washington and St. Francois counties come together.
The Federal Railroad Administration sent five investigators from its St. Louis and Kansas City offices to the accident scene Thursday morning, and an FRA spokesman in Washington said it would take several months before the agency would release a cause for the derailment.
Another run of the Texas Eagle derailed four years ago in southeastern Missouri when flash flooding washed out much of the ground beneath the railroad track in Sabula, a village in Iron County. Ten people were injured in that crash, and two were hospitalized.