(The Canadian Press circulated the following story by Terri Theodore on April 25. Lonnie M. Plasko was a member of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.)
VANCOUVER — The family of a CP Rail engineer who stayed at the controls of a racing train say he died a hero, saving his fellow crew members and others from death and injury in the town of Trail, B.C.
Lonnie Plasko, 51, worked for CP rail for almost half of his life and was anticipating the celebration of his 25th anniversary with the company this June.
Mr. Plasko’s body was found beneath the train wreck Tuesday, a day after the crash.
His niece, Lisa Douglas, said the family has learned Mr. Plasko told the two remaining crewmembers to jump from the train as it careened down the steep track towards the Trail.
“He was a hero. Yes he was, isn’t that wonderful?” Ms. Douglas said.
The accident happened Monday afternoon, right around the time Teck Cominco day-shift workers would be going home and afternoon workers would be starting their shifts.
“Teck Cominco is quite dangerous with pipelines and parking lots and lots of other people there. So he really did do a great, great service to everybody,” Ms. Douglas said.
“He really was very heroic. It could have ended up so much more tragically than just one person lost.”
Ms. Douglas said it was clear her uncle stayed with the train to do the best he could to control the situation.
Investigators are checking the braking systems of every one of the 10 rail cars and two locomotive involved in the crash.
Dan Holbrook with the Transportation Safety Board says it’s clear the train was running uncontrolled down the steep track before it crashed.
“So you would obviously look at the function of the brakes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the brakes malfunctioned. There are operating procedures and practices that need to be stringently followed, particularly in mountain-grade territory,” Mr. Holbrook said.
Anything over 1.8 per cent is considered mountain grade and the track the train charged down Monday afternoon was near four per cent.
“When you’re pulling massive tonnages on a steel-on-steel, low-friction-type environment, every part of a percentage of grade is very significant,” he said.
Mr. Holbrook added such a grade would be one of the steepest tracks in North America.
Witnesses reported smoke pouring from the speeding train’s brakes before the accident.
CP Rail spokesman Mark Seland said the two surviving crew members have been offered critical-stress debriefing and will be interviewed to help determine the cause of Monday’s crash.
“We will be interviewing the crew some time over the next couple of days, taking the data from the event recorder, and possible witnesses, and then pair all that to what the TSB is looking at and Transport Canada and then try to piece together that picture.”
Mr. Seland says the crew would have performed several safety tests on the train before it left the rail yard that day, including a brake test.
“That’s a test from the tail end to the front (to see if ) they have adequate pressure in the air pipes,” he said.
Because an engineer was killed in the crash, Transport Canada is also conducting its own inquiry.
It means there will be three separate investigations into the accident, but Mr. Seland said they’ll be comparing notes.
“We’re working collaboratively to make the best possible analysis of what occurred.”
Clean up of the site, including a dry fertilizer that spilled from some of the overturned rail cars, should be complete within a few days.
Mr. Seland says soil testing will be done around the accident site to determine if anything may have penetrated into the ground.
Carol Venelli-Worosz, a spokeswoman for Teck Cominco, said employees there have also been offered stress counselling if anyone feels they need it.
She said while she’s sure Mr. Plasko tried to do everything in his power to avoid a disaster, Teck Cominco has plans in place for all kinds of incidents and would have enacted them if the accident had been worse.
She said the company will be using lessons learned from the accident to tune up their crisis response.