(The following appeared on the CBS 2 Chicago website on June 23, 2009.)
ROCKFORD, Ill. — The Winnebago County sheriff’s office confirmed Tuesday that four 911 calls were placed as much as 25 minutes before the deadly train derailment and explosion in Rockford, and two were received by railway operators.
Sheriff Dick Meyers told CBS 2’s Mai Martinez four 911 calls came in warning of trouble on the tracks, starting around at about 7:40 p.m.
They were warning of a possible washout due to standing water, he said.
In two of those instances, the 911 operator conveyed the message to the railway operators. Union Pacific received a call 25 minutes before the crash, and CN received a call 21 minutes prior to the incident, Meyers said.
In one instance, one of the railway companies called back for more information. The sheriff’s office also sent two squad cars to the scene, Meyers said.
The 911 tapes and surveillance video associated with the accident are in the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board, Meyers said.
The NTSB is also looking at dashboard camera video of the washed-out trackbed from one of the squad cars sent to confirm the reports coming into the 911 center.
CN and Union Pacific representatives declined to comment.
The train was loaded with thousands of gallons of ethanol when it crashed and burst into flames near Sandy Hollow and South Mulford roads at 8:39 p.m. A woman trying to escape a car stopped at the tracks was killed, and six others were injured. Two remained in the hospital Monday.
Barrington’s village president is appalled that the CN train crew did not stop in time.
“It tells me that there isn’t the right level of concern for human safety by a railroad that would ignore a 911 call in those kinds of conditions,” said Barrington Village Manager Karen Darch.
Darch has something of an agenda. She’s been at odds with Canadian National for over a year, battling the railway’s purchase of rail lines crisscrossing Chicago and the suburbs.
She points to a Canadian government report alleging that half of CN’s locomotives and train brakes were defective, and that 26 percent of the line’s crossings were defective.
The government report also criticizes what it calls ‘a climate of fear’ created by the railway among its employees who want to blow the whistle on safety problems.
A spokesman for Canadian National flatly denies those claims. He says they’re dead wrong and that the carrier has one of the safest operations in North America.
He also refuses to answer questions about whether the train crew was warned before the accident; an accident that has sent chills through Darch.
“It was the worst case scenario I think that many of us have imagined,” Darch said.
On Monday, CBS 2’s Mike Parker talked to a couple who called 911 before the derailment.
“How effective is 911?” Sharon Opsahl asked. “I thought it was to be for all emergencies, and now it just makes me wonder.”
Meyers also told the Rockford Register-Star that while everyone living within a half mile of the mishap was told to evacuate, many people did not.
The county decided not to sound the new outdoor warning siren system, which has an alert for chemical spills, but which might have confused residents into thinking they were being sounded for a tornado warning, Meyers said.
The railroad is not alone in declining comment about the 911 warnings. The NTSB, which is investigating the fiery derailment, is silent on that as well.