The deadly commuter train crash in Gary occurred not only because the engineer of the eastbound train ran a red light, but also because the motorman on the westbound train failed to heed three panicked warnings to stop, transit officials said Friday.
As a result of an internal investigation by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, the transit agency fired both men Friday for their roles in the Jan. 18 collision that killed seven commuters on the South Shore line.
“The technical evidence is overwhelming that (eastbound) train No. 7 went beyond the (red) signal,” said Robert Maddox, superintendent of transportation for the district, at a press conference Friday at district headquarters.
But the engineer on the westbound No. 12 train also was warned three times by a fellow motorman riding in the cab “that train No. 7 may not be stopping” and the engineer “did not take proper precautionary braking action to prevent or lessen the damage that occurred,” Maddox said, even after the motorman who gave the warning fled the cab in panic prior to impact.
Friday’s findings, released at least two to three months before the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to release its own, more definitive findings, reinforced widespread speculation over the past month that the accident was the result of human error.
The bloody crash, which left more than 60 people injured, was the worst in the Chicago area in 15 years. Emergency workers, who scrambled up a snow-covered embankment to aid passengers, had to receive counseling after pulling mangled and dismembered bodies from the wreckage.
Since the accident, investigators from the safety board, NICTD and the Federal Railroad Administration have been conducting tests on the system’s signaling devices, trying to determine whether a failure could have contributed to the crash, which sliced open both trains’ passenger compartments.
David Riordan of Michigan City, Ind., the engineer of the eastbound train, has said he was given a green light that abruptly turned red or went dark as he approached the one-lane gantlet bridge where the accident occurred. He braked, but was unable to stop his two-car train before entering the intersection.
But Maddox said Friday that recording devices showed conclusively that Riordan’s signal “was red for one hour prior to the accident, at the time of the accident and after the accident.”
Re-enactments of the crash sequence, conducted days afterward, also showed that Riordan probably was moving in excess of the railroad’s 45 mile-per-hour speed limit, and might have been able to stop in time had he been going slower, investigators said.
Willard Blewett Jr., meanwhile, the driver of westbound train No. 12, had a green light the day of the accident and correctly entered the bridge, Maddox said.
But, under railroad rules similar to those requiring automobile drivers to do anything to avoid an accident, Blewett should have braked his train if he had any doubt that No. 7 would stop.
Blewett braked only after the accident had occurred.
“We can’t tell you what went on in the motorman’s mind,” said Gerald Hanas, general manager of the district. But Blewett has said he believed No. 7 would stop, even after a fellow engineer, along for the ride in the cab, warned him it didn’t look that way.
That engineer, Mitchell Markowitz of Miller, a community in Gary, yelled three separate warnings to Blewett over about a 15-second period prior to the impact, then “literally fled the cab for his life,” Hanas said, and ran toward the back of the train.
In tests after the accident, investigators were unable to determine conclusively whether Blewett could have avoided the accident entirely by braking. When emergency brakes were applied at the point of the final warning, the train slid 17 feet into the impact zone, Hanas said.
But if they had been applied earlier, at the first or perhaps the second warning, “there was ample room to stop,” Maddox said.
Union officials at the press briefing Friday indicated that Riordan, a 15-year employee of the railroad, and Blewett, a 37-year employee, would appeal their firings.
Drug and alcohol tests on the two engineers were negative, and all other crew members were cleared of wrongdoing in the crash.
James Thompson, general chairman of United Transportation Workers Local 1526, said the union still believes signal failure may have contributed to the accident.
Over the past 18 months, he said, 39 signal problems have been reported to the railroad district, he said, most of them with warning signals, not the final signals like those that lie just before the gantlet bridge in Gary.
NICTD officials say they have fixed those problems, and that all of them would have produced false red lights, not false greens like the one Riordan reported seeing.
Still, “we don’t feel it’s right yet,” Thompson said.
He noted that the district has a financial interest in declaring the accident human error and diverting blame from its signaling system.
“If the outcome was signal failure and you didn’t know why, would you ride the train tomorrow?” he asked.
Hanas, however, dismissed another Thompson suggestion that the district would be able to divert lawsuits by shifting the blame.
“Regardless of how this ends up, the railroad is going to be sued,” he said. Nearly a dozen lawsuits already have been filed.
NICTD officials said Friday they are studying installing safety backup systems now being put in use in cities like Philadelphia, Boston and New York to help with that problem.
Those systems automatically read signals on the line and will stop a train if the operator does not obey them. The automated systems also prevent speeding.
However, such a system would cost the cash-strapped Indiana system “tens of millions of dollars,” Hanas said.
Currently, those systems are used on only a tiny fraction of the nation’s railways. Most have systems identical to the one now in use on the South Shore line.
But Hanas said the National Transportation Safety Board now is studying the problem of human error on rail lines nationally, and is expected to come out in favor of the use of mechanical backup systems for human operators.
Gantlet bridges have not gotten similar scrutiny. Despite concerns that one-lane spans like that in Gary may contribute to collisions, federal railroad officials continue to maintain that they are safe.
But Hanas said the district is considering moving the final warning light on either side of the bridge farther away from it, to give train engineers more stopping room.
He also said he believes the National Transportation Safety Board report, when it is released sometime later this year, will back up his district’s findings of human error and exonerate the South Shore’s signaling system.
“We would not be here today if we felt they had a problem with the signal system,” he said.
