(The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel posted the following article by Larry Sandler on its website on May 29.)
MILWAUKEE, Wisc. — Federal investigators have quietly dropped their probe into why a freight train jumped its tracks, smashed into a Lomira factory and killed a worker inside the plant in 1997, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said Thursday.
The safety board closed its investigation of the Lomira derailment, and a number of other railroad accident inquiries nationwide, because of staffing shortages, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said.
“We couldn’t do an adequate job on all of them,” Lopatkiewicz said.
Track defects were suspected in the derailment. The railroad has since made significant improvements to its tracks statewide and now has an excellent safety record, state Railroad Commissioner Rodney Kreunen said.
On Nov. 22, 1997, 11 cars of a Wisconsin Central Ltd. train veered off the tracks in Lomira. Three of those cars crashed through the back wall of the Kondex Corp. plant.
A 39-year-old Fond du Lac man was pinned beneath a tanker car and died before rescuers could clear away enough of the wreckage to reach him. Four others were injured at the plant, which manufactures blades for lawn mowers and farm equipment.
It was the first time in 11 years that anyone died in a Wisconsin derailment, and the first time in at least 20 years that the victim was neither on the train nor on the tracks.
The NTSB sent Chicago-based rail investigator Cyril Gura to look into the crash. Within days, Gura said his inquiry was focusing on a broken rail.
At the time, Wisconsin Central was plagued by derailments and facing criticism from public officials over its safety record.
But Gura said then that metal tests on the rail could be delayed for months while the NTSB laboratory was tied up analyzing the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in July 1996, killing all 230 people aboard.
Three years later, NTSB officials said the inquiry still wasn’t finished because of a shortage of railroad accident investigators. Sometime after that, the agency decided to give up on railroad accident investigations that weren’t likely to uncover new information that could help prevent future accidents, Lopatkiewicz said.
Aviation accidents have always commanded top priority at the NTSB, which by law is required to investigate every aircraft accident that causes death, injury or significant damage. By contrast, the agency can choose which railroad, marine, highway and pipeline accidents to investigate, and it usually focuses only on the most serious cases.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin Central, now part of the Canadian National Railway Corp., launched “a long-term concentrated effort throughout the state” to upgrade its tracks, said Kreunen, formerly a critic of the railroad.
The railroad also erected a special barrier at Lomira to catch derailed trains before they can crash into the Kondex plant, Kreunen said.