(The following letter to the editor appeared on the Battle Creek Enquirer website on January 3, and iis written by the wife of a locomotive engineer.)
BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — On New Year’s Eve, my husband, two youngest kids and myself were driving over the Main Street railroad tracks and we saw a car that had turned onto the tracks and got stuck. My husband is a locomotive engineer with CN and tried calling the tower in the Battle Creek yard. This is not an emergency line and he was not able to get ahold of anybody, so he called 911.
When the dispatcher finally came on to help him, we had turned around and gotten back to the tracks. He told her the situation and that he needed them to get through to CN and to alert them. In the meantime, the car had driven down the track a ways. The dispatcher wanted to know the make of the car; my husband said that he didn’t know but that it was important that they get all trains stopped. Then a train whistle blew. He told her a train was coming, but she would not proceed until he told her the make of the car. It was 6 p.m. and the car was down from us and we could not see. He told her, “It’s going to be a smashed car if we don’t get this train stopped!!!”
He had to hang up on them for there to be any chance of stopping the train. He called the tower once more and got through. They were able to stop the train just short of the car, no thanks to the 911 dispatcher and procedure. In short, if it would have been anyone but a CN employee with the ability to talk to the tower, this story could have had a fatal ending. I think that 911 needs to review its procedures to accommodate different emergencies.
Jenny Putman
Battle Creek