(The following article by Jeremy Gorner was posted on the Chicago Tribune website on June 28.)
CHICAGO — A Metra train struck a semi-trailer truck at a railroad crossing on Chicago’s West Side this afternoon, injuring four people and stranding an unspecified number of commuters, authorities said.
Outbound Union Pacific West line train No. 39 hit the truck, which was hauling garbage, at Kinzie Street and Kilbourn Avenue, just west of the Kedzie Avenue station, around 3:45 p.m.
“Debris was thrown all over the tracks, and it really smells,” Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said from the scene.
The semi was southbound on Kilbourn when the train hit the trailer, which had not cleared the tracks, Chicago Police Officer Amina Greer said.
The semi apparently caromed into a utility truck that was hoisting a bucket above the ground with two workers inside, Langford said.
The workers, employed through contract by Commonwealth Edison, were performing maintenance work on a utility pole when the semi slammed into the pole, causing it to lean.
“The two workers were stranded inside the bucket,” Langford said. “Both were rescued by firefighters.” One of the workers suffered an arm injury and was reported in serious condition.
Paramedics took the utility worker, a 48-year-old man, to Mt. Sinai Hospital, Greer said. Two Metra passengers, a 61-year-old woman and a 79-year-old man, were taken to Norwegian-American Hospital, and a third passenger, a 37-year-old woman, was taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, she said.
Two of those passengers suffered cuts and bruises and a third suffered bumps, Langford said. They were all reported in good condition.
Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said a fourth passenger on the train was hurt, but Langford could not confirm that. The other worker rescued from the bucket refused medical attention and the truck driver was not injured.
Four Union Pacific West trains were canceled due to the crash investigation, according to Metra’s Web site.
Outbound and inbound trains moved around the accident site during the evening rush, but had been experiencing delays of up to one hour. Trains originally had been halted in both directions.
Passengers on train No. 39 were transferred onto another train, Pardonnet said. She did not know how many were on the train.
The train involved in the crash left Ogilvie Transportation Center downtown at 3:40 p.m. and was due in Elburn, the westernmost end of the Metra commuter line, at 5:11 p.m., Metra spokesman Patrick Waldron said. Emergency crews, he said, went to the scene to clear the tracks.
Authorities said the crash caused at least one power line to either dangle or break off. Langford said a line touched one of the two workers in the bucket, but neither was shocked because “the bucket was well insulated.” He did not know if the line was live.
ComEd spokesman Tom Stevens did not know what equipment was damaged because of the crash, but said crews, as a precaution, were forced to shut off power to 305 customers in the area in order to reroute power to another line. The crash did not cause any outages.
“We wanted to make sure the area was safe to all customers,” Stevens said.
Shortly before 5 p.m., power had been restored to all but 28 of those customers, he said.
The driver of the semi, Roy Gordon, 40, of Hammond, Ind., was ticketed for “no parking” on railroad tracks, Greer said.
She did not know the basis for the citation.
“Evidently, it [the semi] had stopped for some reason,” she said.
Gordon was scheduled to appear in Traffic Court on July 25 at 9 a.m., Greer said.