
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993                   TAG: 9309260132
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT DVORCHAK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MOBILE, ALA.                                LENGTH: Medium

HERO OF TRAIN WRECK CLINGS TO TIMBER, HELPS SAVE 30

In the predawn bedlam of a burning bayou, Michael Dopheide clung to a bridge timber with his left arm and lifted fellow passengers out of a window of a half-submerged Amtrak train with his right.

"He should get a medal for what he did," said Gus Maloney, whose injured wife was among 30 passengers Dopheide rescued. "He's a real hero. If there was any way to reward him, I would. We'll be forever grateful."

Dopheide, 26, of Omaha, Neb., had just removed his shoes and eyeglasses to get some sleep after the Sunset Limited left Mobile. A June graduate of the DePaul University law school in Chicago, he boarded the Superliner in Los Angeles for the 3,066-mile journey to Miami.

A jolt knocked him from his seat and into action. The train plunged into Bayou Canot and was half-submerged, its 30 dazed occupants choking on smoke from a crew car burning nearby.

"Everybody was moaning and groaning. Someone yelled, `Oh my God, we're all going to die,' " Dopheide said.

In the inky blackness and minus his glasses, Dopheide borrowed a key ring flashlight. The thin stream of light was all he had, but it led him out.

A piece of timber from the railroad bridge stuck through a window near the emergency exit at the rear of the car. Dopheide clambered outside, and in a clear, calm voice, ordered the others to follow.

Clinging to the timber, Dopheide extended his right hand to help passengers squirm through the window and lowered them feet-first into the water.

Each had to swim about 10 yards to a bridge piling. For those unable to swim, Dopheide placed them on flotsam perches or cradled them as he swam them to shore.

"I held their hand and kind of led them to floating debris they could hold onto. Some of them hooked onto my neck as I swam," said Dopheide, a former water safety instructor.

by CNB