Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 31, 1995 TAG: 9501310161
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER AND KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Six crew members on the two trains escaped serious injury, some by jumping just before the collision.
One engine went nose first into the river; and on the other side of the bridge, one car went sliding down an embankment, directly toward a mobile home with a woman and 2-year-old girl inside.
``We were just in here talking about the Super Bowl. Heard this boom,'' said Mike Cox, who had been in Doc's Garage just behind the trailer. His 2-year-old daughter, Sierra, was in the trailer. When he ran out, he saw smoke coming from the far side of the bridge across the river, and he saw the train car plunging down the slope.
He raced to the trailer, yelling for his daughter and his girlfriend, Missie Thompson, to get out.
The car hit a narrow ditch at the base of the hill and came to a stop several yards before it would have smashed into the trailer.
Curtis Montgomery told of an even closer call.
He was walking beside the track when the car came sliding down. He said it swept through the area where he had been 15 seconds earlier.
``I ain't walking that track no more,'' he said. ``That was a close call - 15 seconds.''
``It was about the loudest explosion I ever heard,'' said Al Tolley, who had also been in the garage. He came out and saw the cars tumbling off the track.
``When I seen 'em coming this way, I kept moving'' as fast as he could in the opposite direction, he said.
``Scary,'' said Chris Cash, looking at the car that had stopped so near the trailer. ``It's still scary. That thing sitting there, you can hear it moving every now and then. I wouldn't stay here tonight. Only thing that stopped that was that little ditch right there. Never saw anything like it before in my life.''
The accident happened about 11:30 a.m.
One train was supposed to be waiting for the eastbound train to move past it, said Rick Harris, NS manager of public relations in Atlanta.
The collision took place at the switch point, he said. ``And of course we really don't know what happened.''
Two men were on the moving train and four on the one standing still, Harris said.
They were treated at Radford Community Hospital and released Monday afternoon.
The crash caused more than 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel to spill, said Stan Crigger, Pulaski County's emergency services coordinator. He said the track beneath the two engines was wiped out.
Harris said most of the fuel that spilled from the two locomotives stayed on the hillside near the bridge.
Emergency services crews from Radford and Pulaski County worked to contain diesel fuel and hydraulic fluid leaking from the cars. Radford Fire Chief Martin ``Jigger'' Roberts said they placed absorbent booms just below the trestle near Shelter No. 3, at Memorial Bridge and near Radford University's Dedmon Center, and contained the fuel and fluid. One Radford firefighter fell into the icy river, but Roberts said he was not hurt.
An NS clean-up crew arrived to assist by mid-afternoon.
The moving train had two locomotives and 70 cars, 16 of them empty. The other had three locomotives and about 60 cars, more than 40 empty, Harris said. All the locomotives and 10 or 11 cars derailed, he said. Some of the cars carried new Saturn automobiles.
Harris said no estimate of damages had been completed Monday, and it was not certain how soon the damaged line would reopen. Eight trains normally use it each day.
If necessary, he said, trains will be detoured onto an NS line that goes through Bluefield, W.Va.
One of the people who went to see the submerged engine after the wreck was William Coles of Radford, who worked for the railroad 14 years.
``So far as the damage, I think this is the worst one that I've ever seen,'' Coles said. ``Those things are powerful when they're on the rails, but when they get on the ground they're ... just like a little baby.''
by CNB