(The following story by Jamie Stockwell appeared on the Washington Post website on March 9.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — An 80-car freight train traveling north through Riverdale Park early yesterday morning struck a vehicle that had stalled on the tracks, closing the tracks and complicating the morning commute, Prince George’s County authorities said.
No one was injured when the freight train, operated by CSX, struck the stalled Camaro shortly after 6 a.m. at the grade-level train crossing at Queensbury Road and Fayette Street, said Mark Brady, spokesman for the county’s fire and rescue services. He said the train pushed the car about 30 yards so that it became wedged between a stopped southbound MARC commuter train and the freight train.
“And then the car erupted into flames,” Brady said at the scene yesterday morning. “No one was injured, luckily, but it had the potential to become a major, horrific disaster.”
About 200 passengers were aboard MARC Camden Line train 841, bound for Union Station, and they were transferred to Metro and county-operated buses, said Richard Scher, spokesman for MARC.
Scher said that MARC suspended service south of the Greenbelt station immediately after the collision. Passengers were transferred to the nearby Metrorail station, and Metro officials honored their train tickets as travel fare. Service was restored on the Camden Line about 10 a.m.
Scher said the 841 is one of several trains that travel every morning and afternoon between Baltimore and Washington and serve about 3,800 commuters daily. “The majority of the [daily] riders were affected by this,” because most passengers ride all the way into the District, he said.
“We are very fortunate that none of the passengers was injured,” he said, “and in terms of evacuation and cleanup, it went about as smoothly as it could go.”
The Camaro was reduced to a pile of charred rubber and twisted metal. Bits of the bumper and tires were shoveled by town employees and loaded onto the beds of two trucks.
The car’s driver, identified by Riverdale Park police as William Alvarez, was detained at the scene and later issued traffic citations for reckless driving, negligent driving and driving with a suspended license, said Lt. Harry Adams, spokesman for the department. Alvarez, 33, who lives in Prince George’s County, was released from police custody late yesterday morning, Adams said.
According to witnesses who later spoke to authorities, Alvarez approached the crossing in the Camaro and tried to make a right turn onto Fayette Street just beyond the tracks, Adams said. But the driver turned too soon, and the car became stuck on the northbound track. Alvarez and his passenger safely fled the immediate area.
The commuter train arrived at the station moments later to pick up passengers, and its operator, noticing the car on the tracks, used the radio to contact the operator of the approaching CSX freight train, bound for Jessup with a load of new automobiles, said Dan Sullivan, spokesman for CSX.
The operator slowed the 80-car train but was unable to come to a complete stop, he said.
Firefighters and paramedics assigned to Station 7, three doors down from the train crossing, heard the collision and a “loud boom,” looked toward the tracks and “saw a plume of smoke,” Brady said. He said they rushed to the scene and, using foam, extinguished the blaze within a half-hour.
The CSX train sustained minor structural and fire damage, he said, and the MARC train suffered moderate fire damage to one of its cars.