The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.31           September 15, 1997 
 
 
Crashes Force Gov't Rail Investigation  

BY KAY SEDAM
MIAMI - A long list of railroad accidents has made national news over the last several months. In response, the U.S. Federal Railway Administration (FRA) announced it would step up investigations, putting the CSX and Union Pacific railroads under particular scrutiny. Why the rail industry is becoming increasingly unsafe, and what to do about it, is a growing discussion among rail workers and others.

Some of the incidents in the last three months include:

* Two CSX trains in St. Albans, West Virginia, were involved in a rear-end collision June 7 that resulted in one fatality, two injuries, and hundreds of people being forced to stay indoors for hours due to poisonous smoke emanating from the train's burning cargo.

* On June 22 two Union Pacific trains in Devine, Texas, collided when they both ended up on a single track. Four people died, 33 train cars derailed, and fuel tanks carrying 15,000 gallons of diesel fuel ignited. The accident occurred on a track line without signals, where permission to run on the track is established by written orders and radio communications.

* In Washington D.C. on July 8 three cars of a CSX train derailed after colliding with an Amtrak train. A flatbed car laden with truck trailers sideswiped the passing Amtrak train. Officials knew hours before the accident that the trailer was leaning but did nothing about it because a supervisor had ruled it was safe.

* In Cypress, Florida, a CSX tank car carrying hydrogen peroxide sprung a leak following a derailment June 4, and in Charlotte, North Carolina, a CSX train tumbled into a creek after the trestle gave way in July.

* On August 9 an Amtrak train carrying hundreds of passengers derailed north of Kingman, Arizona following a bridge trestle collapsing. More than 150 people were injured.

* A 30-car derailment occurred near Jolly, Texas, August 17 on the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe line following a crew report that "they may have struck an automobile or been struck by an automobile."

* In Texas two engineers were killed on August 21 when a runaway Union Pacific train with no one aboard collided head- on with another freight, triggering a spectacular blaze. The unmanned train rolled nearly 10 miles at speeds up to 60 mph.

Investigations at Union Pacific, CSX
Union Pacific (UP) is the country's largest transporter of hazardous materials and chemical substances. It has been increasing the amount of hazardous material it ships -now an average of 7.5 percent per year. From 1993 through 1996, UP had 28 derailments, collisions, or other accidents involving chemical spills or releases. The Texas wreck sparked the FRA investigation.

At CSX, after an initial inspection of the railroad's operational tests and inspections program, the FRA initially concluded that CSX's program implementation did not "achieve the intended objectives."

For the past three years, CSX officials stated the company had an accident rate of 1.92 accidents per million train miles operated. That was the lowest rate among the nation's biggest railroads, they claim. But year-to-date, CSX has had 14 more reportable accidents than it had for the comparable period last year.

Expected to take at least 60 days, the FRA's safety review team at CSX will examine, among other things, the railroad's dispatching system; review its operational procedures; track inspection and network of traffic signals.

This implementation of a "safety team" at CSX comes after a verdict against the rail giant in a wrongful-death suit involving a Cooper City, Florida man, Paul Palank, killed in a 1991 train crash. The jury awarded the man's survivors $50 million for the rail company's failure to maintain the railroad properly and "violating the public trust."

"This whole thing was about sending a message," said juror Linda Frankel. "This was about punishment, about trying to make sure this railroad and all railroads, stop violating the public trust."

The lawyers for the Palank family presented evidence that a broken switch pin that caused the accident was not located and repaired because of company downsizing, overworked inspectors - including one who falsified his inspection reports - and a diminishing willingness to make necessary expenditures to maintain safety on their rail lines.

Workers express opinions on safety
Recently the vice president and general manager of CSX's business operations Paul Sandler has been speaking at a series of company-sponsored "town hall meetings." The purpose of these meetings, as explained in the CSX Florida Business Unit newsletter, is for CSX to "gain a better insight of our safety problems and to deliver a uniform message concerning safety and quality of life issues." The increase in "human factor" derailments and the negative impact that this is having on CSX business was a focal point.

At the "town hall" meeting at the yard in Hialeah, Florida, company representative Sandler stated that CSX had downsized a little too much. But now CSX would turn this error around by hiring new employees in all departments. Transportation employees, who will have to pay over $3,700 to attend CSX's "rail school," will be coming in at 75 percent of scale wage.

CSX employees at the Hialeah town meeting were given the opportunity to express their evaluation of the safety record and conditions of the Hialeah yard. A car inspector said he genuinely fears for his life when he is inspecting a cut of cars and a switching crew at either end of a tracks is "kicking cars" and putting together trains. The car inspector told of the increase in air hoses being run over, which he must replace immediately because they are used to charge the brakes of trains about to depart.

A crew that works a job for Amtrak, located in the adjacent yard, sighted the numerous derailments caused by the very long trains that are switched with a two-person crew. One conductor said, "You can't be at two places at once, at both ends of a 15-car Amtrak train."

Many of the railworkers at Hialeah Yard complained of the unsafe working conditions both in the yard and in the industrial areas. They told of piled up garbage on the track, water-covered tracks after a storm, and in general the lack of maintenance of the lines. In a two-month period this summer, at least four derailments in the yard made it hard for trains to depart. In the last year, the Hialeah Yard bosses have hired about 20 new transportation workers. Some of the newly hired workers explained how quickly they were expected to take on responsibilities they had no idea would occur.

Reflecting workers' concern over safety, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) demonstrated in Washington, D.C., April 28 to protest the rising number of deaths of railworkers and the intransigence on the part of the rail bosses' to the safety question.

On June 10, following a coal train accident in West Virginia, the BLE union on CSX railroads staged a three-hour walkout to protest the death of engineers in this accident. President William Clinton slapped an injunction on the BLE to force it to end its protest.

Union Pacific and the United Transportation Union (UTU) have now established a joint safety initiative. Under the agreement issued July 11, the two plan to address a variety of issues including injury prevention; employee "quality of life"; derailment prevention; and grade crossing safety. The UTU and FRA also announced that they had formed a safety partnership.

In another development last February, the FRA required Wisconsin Central Transportation Corp. (WC) to improve track and equipment inspection, training measures, and operating practices. The requirement followed an FRA safety audit of WC's operations; the audit followed two UTU petitions asking FRA to prohibit WC from using one-person crews, and to ban the use of remote control locomotive operations by WC and all other railroads. WC then was required to suspend use of one-person crews, and increase safety-related spending.

Kay Sedam is a member of the UTU Local 1138 at CSX Hialeah Yard.  
 
 
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