CLARENDON, Texas — It probably will be months before investigators know how two Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight trains ended up on the same track before their head-on collision that killed an engineer and injured three others, a wire service reported.
Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration were on the scene Wednesday, the day after the fiery wreck in the Panhandle.
“We heard them hit, so I looked up and there was just fire everywhere,” said Mike Ritchie, a Texas Department of Transportation worker, who went to the scene from his work site a mile away. “I saw this huge fireball shoot up maybe 200 feet in the air.”
The cause probably won’t be known for months, NTSB spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi said. “It’s very early in our investigation,” she said.
Recorders from each train were recovered Wednesday and were expected to contain information on the trains’ throttle positions, brakes and whether their horns were used, Peduzzi said.
“All of that information will be retrieved, downloaded and examined,” she said.
Thursday, investigators will conduct a sight distance test at about the same time as Tuesday’s collision to see when the conductors would have been able to see the other trains, Peduzzi said.
Tuesday’s impact crushed the leading locomotives. One was ripped from its chassis and pushed back from the wheels. A 20-foot section of track was pushed through a coal car and stuck straight up in the air.
Three of the trains’ five locomotives and 23 rail cars derailed in the crash, Peduzzi said. A large fireball erupted after the collision, sending thick smoke into the air, witnesses said.
Galen Shelby, 61, who worked for BNSF for 27 years, died from injuries suffered in the fiery collision Tuesday morning, railroad spokesman Joseph Faust said. Officials said Shelby, a Lubbock resident, was pinned under the trains for about five hours before his body was removed.
BNSF conductor Bruce Patterson, 57, of Amarillo was dug out from beneath a burning coal car by rescue workers and bystanders, officials said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind the death toll would have gone up by one if it weren’t for these people,” Department of Public Safety spokesman Wayne Beighle told the Amarillo Globe-News. “There was fire everywhere and they went in there to dig that man out.”
Belinda Montana, director of operations for Clarendon Emergency Medical Services, said Patterson was conscious and talking during the about 20 minutes it took to free him.
“We were just focused on getting him out,” Montana said. “I was concerned for the safety of my crew, but I wasn’t worried about the danger to myself. We had to save him.”
Patterson and engineer Ronald Gordon, 51, remained in stable condition at Northwest Texas hospital in Amarillo early Wednesday. Conductor Rodney Torres, 34, was treated and released.
BNSF officials said one train loaded with coal was traveling from Wyoming to Texas and the other was bound to California from Kansas.
No hazardous materials were released in the crash, which happened at 9 a.m. about three miles west of Clarendon.
Cleanup crews removed the trains and debris from the tracks and reopened the main line early Wednesday morning, Faust said.
The track is a main rail link between Fort Worth, Amarillo and Denver.