Bodies and clues sought in Amtrak wreck

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Truck driver didn't see train, warning lights

March 16, 1999
Web posted at: 7:51 p.m. EST (0051 GMT)

In this story: Rail cars may have blocked trucker's view Trucker had probationary license Train looked like an accordion Finding survivors unlikely RELATED STORIES, SITES

BOURBONNAIS, Illinois (CNN) -- Rescue crews used giant cranes Tuesday to move mangled, smoldering wreckage as they searched for victims of a fiery collision between a speeding Amtrak train and a tractor-trailer loaded with steel.

"The cars are piled on top of one another, and what's left to do is to lift up these cars and get underneath and see if there's anybody left inside," said National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia.

Dogs were also brought in to search for human remains in the "City of New Orleans" train that had been traveling from Chicago to New Orleans on Monday night.

Four to six people are still missing and feared dead. Amtrak said there were 216 passengers, crew members and off-duty Amtrak workers on the train.

NTSB officials said it would be difficult to get a handle on the number of fatalities until all the remains are pulled out of the wreckage.

Thirteen bodies were pulled from a burned-out sleeper car. An NTSB official said 116 people were injured, some burned, some with amputated fingers or toes, at least one with a broken back. The official said 49 people had been taken to hospitals.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with all those people who were involved," President Clinton told reporters before leaving Washington for a political fund-raising event in Florida.

"I want you to know that we will do everything we can to help the victims and their families, and to ensure that the investigation moves forward with great care and speed," the president said.

This is the first major transportation accident where an NTSB family affairs team is on hand to help victims and their families, noted Goglia. He said the team was created after the downing of TWA Flight 800.

Rail cars may have blocked trucker's view

The train slammed into the truck shortly after 9:30 p.m.

Goglia said there were 10 NTSB teams working the accident site gathering information and physical evidence. The teams have different areas of expertise such as mechanical, operations, tracks and signals.

"We will run these signals and verify that they were in fact working properly," Goglia said. "We will run the timing of the sensors that were 3,400 feet up the track. We will make sure that the lights worked, that the cross bucks came down, and so on."

Goglia also said train cars parked on the north side of the railroad crossing may have blocked the truck driver's view of the approaching train. He said investigators will run view angle tests after the wreckage has been cleared.

The trucker, John Stokes, 58, said he didn't see the train as he approached the tracks, said Cy Gura, a safety engineer with the NTSB.

Just as he started driving across the tracks, "the flashing lights turn on," Gura said, and the driver saw "the train coming, and he tried to get his tractor-trailer across ... and the train struck him."

Trucker had probationary license

Gura described Stokes as "very sad and upset. He felt he did whatever he thought he could do to clear the train track, but he didn't do it."

Stokes, of Manteno, Illinois, was treated at a local hospital and released.

Records from the Secretary of State show he was driving with a probationary Illinois license after getting five speeding tickets in Indiana from 1996 to 1998 -- at least three while he was driving a truck.

He was just 10 days away from completing his probation.

Two NTSB human performance teams will focus separately on the railroad employees and the truck driver. Investigators have interviewed Stokes and the surviving locomotive engineer. The recorder box on the lead locomotive was taken to Chicago.

"It gives information about speed, about brake applications, about when the whistle was blown, about acceleration, throttle settings," said Amtrak spokesman Clifford Black.

Train looked like an accordion

The word "Empty" is spray-painted on the train car to show it has been checked for victims

The collision occurred in bitter cold about 9:45 p.m. Monday at a railroad crossing in the town of about 14,000 located 50 miles south of Chicago.

It left the train's two engines and leading cars scattered like burned and broken toys over a quarter-mile area.

One engine punched through a car behind it, and the crash sparked a fire that burned for more than five hours.

Eyewitness Scott Andrews said the train looked like "an accordion" after the crash, and "it was on fire." Another compared the dazed survivors to "walking zombies."

"All of the sudden everything just started crashing and catching on fire and people hollering and running," said Blanche Jones, a passenger from Memphis, Tennessee.

"We couldn't get out, couldn't find a way out. That was the most devastating thing of all," Jones said. "By the grace of God, I just went down a stairway and found a way to get out and let everybody know how to get out."

"It was pitch-dark. Our eyes had to adjust. Everyone was screaming, people on top. I didn't know whether I was going to get out or if it would explode," another survivor said.

One passenger outside a car engulfed in flames yelled, "My mother is in there, my aunt" and then jumped into the fire, survivor Sidney Knox said. "I guess he got them out."

Knox also described how the night air was split with screaming and moaning.

"I thought that flesh was frying, but I guess it was the train that was burning," he said.

Fire chief: Finding survivors unlikely

Bourbonnais Fire Chief Mike Harshbarger told reporters that everyone killed in the wreck was in a sleeper car.

He said searchers were going by hand through the split sleeper car, which Amtrak officials said was directly behind the engines and a baggage car, to find the remains of other victims.

"The victims have all been recovered from one car ... a double-deck type of sleeper berth. The car is broken in the center and is damaged -- about two-thirds of it -- by fire. The interior, of course, is filled with debris from fire," the fire chief said at a news conference.

"To find survivors in the wreckage would be pretty unlikely," he said earlier.

In all, the train consisted of two engines and 14 railroad cars. Both locomotives and all but the last three of the passenger cars left the tracks. One of the engines also split in half.

Correspondent Patty Davis, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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