(The following article by Tim McLaughlin was posted on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on July 12.)
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Union Pacific Corp. on Monday issued a sweeping denial of a published report accusing it of destroying evidence after grade-crossing accidents. But the railroad company conceded that it failed in “several dozen instances” to report fatalities to a national agency by telephone.
The response, including a letter to employees from Richard K. Davidson, the chairman, president and chief executive of Union Pacific, came after a story Sunday in The New York Times that portrayed the company as an example of how some railroads destroy and mishandle evidence after grade-crossing fatalities.
A portion of the story was published Sunday in the Post-Dispatch.
In a recent 18-month period, The Times said, it found that several federal and state courts had imposed sanctions on Union Pacific, the nation’s biggest railroad, for destroying or failing to preserve evidence in crossing accidents.
“We do not destroy information or evidence needed for legal proceedings,” Union Pacific said in a statement on its Web site. “In the rare instances when an individual employee intentionally destroyed or altered evidence, the employee was fired.”
Nevertheless, during the course of a seven-month investigation by the newspaper, Union Pacific said it learned that “some of our reporting and compliance processes were not as thorough as we expect.”
Davidson said in a letter to employees that much of the factual information in stories from The New York Times and other newspapers was accurate. The tone of the stories, however, created the impression that Union Pacific doesn’t follow the rules, he said.
“This is not the kind of company we are,” Davidson wrote on the company’s Web site. “When we learned of these breakdowns in our processes, we took immediate corrective actions.”
In October 2002, the railroad instituted major changes to ensure that materials are kept after every serious grade-crossing accident, Union Pacific said.
Union Pacific’s top executive also said the railroad will begin a program to install video cameras on locomotives to ensure an accurate record of crossing accidents.
Between 1976 and 2003, grade-crossing accidents on Union Pacific declined 84 percent to 489 from 3,049, the railroad said. The annual number of fatalities in that period dropped to 68 from 261.
The Times story said Union Pacific, based in Omaha, Neb., had been inconsistent in notifying the National Response Center about crossing fatalities. Davidson didn’t dispute that point.
“While we report consistently and properly to the Federal Railroad Administration and state and local authorities, we failed, in several dozen instances, to comply with a specific requirement that we notify the (National Response Center) by phone,” Davidson said.
The company said it has started a further, comprehensive audit of reporting requirements to identify any other shortcomings, Davidson said in the letter.
Charles R. Rightnowar, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen for Union Pacific’s central region, said railroad workers don’t consider the Federal Railroad Administration to be a tough enforcer.
The Times said that in the last eight years, railroads have broken federal rules by failing to promptly report hundreds of fatal accidents. This has denied federal authorities the chance to investigate the causes of the accidents while the evidence was fresh and available, the newspaper said.