DES PLAINES, Ill. — A 137-car northbound Union Pacific train struck a 52-car southbound train and derailed into Valery Roman’s back yard at 885 Warrington Rd. in Des Plaines late Monday night near Prairie Lakes Park and Community Center, the Des Plaines Journal reported.
“I was sitting in the house and I heard three loud booms,” said Roman. Then the power went out and I looked outside and there was the train right there in my backyard,” said Roman.
Terry Panzke, who also lives in the Warringotn road house that Roman does, along with her parents, said she heard the crash while watching “All in the Family” at about 10:30 p.m.
“My son, Austin, slept right through it,” she said. “Then I went upstairs to my parents bedroom and said, “Ma, a train just crashed in your backyard. She was like ‘yeah, right.'”
A block away on Ashland Avenue, Lisa Brizzolara not only heard the trains colliding, but felt the vibration in her house.
“The windows rattled and we went around to see if any of them broke. It sounded like an explosion and then just like a train stopping for a really long time. It was the longest stop and when it’s that long you know it1s not good and when the power went out we thought it was really bad. It was really scary.”
One car appeared to have rolled into the Roman backyard stopping approximately 20 yards from her above-ground swimming pool. Roman stated that she had lived in the house for more than 20 years and had never given any thought to the possibility of a train wreck. Des Plaines Fire Chief Tom Farinella stated that the first emergency call came into the firehouse at 10:40 a.m. and that fire fighting units were on the scene within two or three minutes.
Upon their arrival, rescue workers located one worker trapped inside the engine which was draped with power lines. Farinella stated that once it had been determined that the lines were not energized they were able to get a paramedic inside and pull the man to safety. Union Pacific spokesman J. E. Bromley stated that two train workers, Engineer, J.D. Burnett and Conductor Michael Gilbert suffered only minor injuries and had already been released from the hospital by 10 a.m. Tuesday.
According to Bromley, the northbound train was carrying creamed corn and that some of the 52 cars in the southbound train were loaded with automobiles and that some were empty.
Bromley refused to speculate on the cause of the crash.
“When the investigation is complete we’ll know,” he said.
“Investigators will check the locomotive recorders which tells them exactly what the mechanical system was doing at the time and the signal system and the crew.”
Bromley did acknowledge that there is a cross-over switch nearby, but said he did not know the exact location of the switch or if a failure to activate the switch caused the derailment. He also acknowledged that it was fortunate that there weren’t more serious injuries.
Mike Radziewicz, the on-scene Commonwealth Edison spokesman made a similar observation.
“This train wreck looks alot worse than it really is,” stated Radziewicz. He went on to say that the crash knocked out two power circuits that left 2,200 area residents without electrical power. He stated that 1,500 of those residents were in Park Ridge and that within 20 minutes ComEd repair crews had restored power to more than half of them.
“Our first concern is safety,” Radziewicz said, “safety of our crew, the people working on the train, and then restoring power to our customers.”
Radziewicz added that power should be restored to the remaining residents by mid-Tuesday morning .
More than a dozen heavy trucks and trailers of equipment from Hulcher Professional Services packed the parking lot at the Prairie Lakes Park and Community Center. Hulcher is a professional services firm based in Hammond, IN that specializes in righting trains and repairing the tracks after a crash.