(The following article by Stuart Tomlinson was posted on the Oregonian website on November 16.)
PORTLAND, Ore. — An empty garbage train sideswiped a loaded one Saturday near Kelso, Wash., derailing more than 20 cars and injuring two crewmen.
The crash, about two miles south of Kelso, occurred on the same stretch of track where five people died in a train collision in 1993.
About 8 a.m., a northbound Union Pacific train hauling empty garbage containers collided with a southbound Burlington Northern train with full containers as the loaded train was moving from the mainline to an adjacent track about two miles south of Kelso.
The engineer and conductor on the Union Pacific train were injured, said Gus Melonas, spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which owns the tracks.
One of the crew members was trapped briefly in the locomotive before rescue crews reached him, Melonas said. “They were both talking, and their injuries are non-life threatening,” he said.
Seven J. Shaben, 60, the engineer, who works out of the railroad’s Seattle office, was in satisfactory condition at PeaceHealth St. John’s Medical Center in Longview with multiple injuries. R.D. Calhoun, 60, of Portland, the conductor, was in serious condition at OHSU Hospital with spinal injuries, a nursing supervisor said.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, officials said.
Trooper Garvin March of the Washington State Patrol said a container of garbage partially blocked two of the three southbound lanes of Interstate 5 for about an hour. The emergency lane remained closed through Saturday night while crews cleared the wreckage.
One of the two track lines was expected to reopen late Saturday night, Melonas said. Amtrak passengers traveling between Seattle and Portland were transferred to buses, he said.
Crews contained about 7,000 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled from the locomotives in a gully between the tracks and the freeway, preventing it from reaching the Columbia River about a quarter of a mile away, he said.
It was not immediately known how fast the trains were traveling when they collided. The maximum speed at the switch point where the collision happened ranges from 49 to 59 mph, Melonas said.
The accident happened in the same spot where five people died when two trains collided Nov. 11, 1993.
In that crash, investigators said the crew of a southbound Burlington Northern train went past a yellow warning light without trying to stop until coming upon a red light 13/4 miles down the track, too late to prevent a collision with a northbound Union Pacific train.
“The similarities between the two crashes is spooky,” said John Hiatt, a Spokane attorney who successfully sued Burlington Northern on behalf of the family of a Union Pacific train conductor who died, Tom Klein, in Multnomah County in 1995.
“There is a history of signal malfunctions in that area,” Hiatt said. “There’s a cure for it, and that’s positive train separation, which is a signal that will stop the train before there is a collision, even if the conductor was unconscious. How many more crashes will it take before something is done?”
Spokesmen for both railroads referred all questions about the cause of the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Melonas said the Burlington Northern train — three locomotives and 32 cars full of garbage — was on its way from Seattle to a landfill in Roosevelt, Wash.
The Union Pacific train — three locomotives and 90 cars — was traveling from Portland to Seattle; most of its cars, also used to haul garbage, were empty.
About seven of the Burlington Northern cars derailed but remained upright. About 15 of the Union Pacific cars derailed — some were upright, and others were crushed, Melonas said.