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

DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993                   TAG: 9309230222
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SARALAND, ALA.                                LENGTH: Medium

AMTRAK WRECK KILLS 43; BARGE MAY BE AT FAULT

An Amtrak train hurtled off a bridge into an inky bayou early Wednesday, plunging its sleeping passengers into a nightmare of fire, water and death. The FBI said it was examining a barge that may have struck the bridge before the wreck.

Forty-three people aboard the cross-country Sunset Limited were killed, some of them trapped in a submerged silver passenger car and others in a burned engine, and 10 Accident shakes perception of railroad safety. A12 were missing, railroad spokesman Howard Robertson said. It was the deadliest wreck in Amtrak's 23-year history.

More than 150 people survived, some to help other passengers who clung to wreckage from a collapsed section of the bridge in a swamp populated by alligators, snakes and bears.

A group of six barges near the crash site included one that had a big dent in it, and a concrete piling that supported the bridge also was damaged, FBI Agent Charles W. Archer said at an evening briefing in Mobile. "We are looking at a suspect barge," he said, adding that it was "obvious" something had hit the piling.

Asked how the barges might have struck the bridge, which crosses a bayou that isn't navigable by barges and is only about 7 feet above the water, Archer said, "I understand it was very foggy this morning."

FBI metallurgists were examining the barge and the bridge pilings, Archer said.

A CSX freight train had passed the scene an hour before the accident and reported no problems, said Richard Bussard, communications director for CSX Transportation Inc., the Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad that owns the track.

The Los Angeles-to-Miami train crashed at about 3 a.m., about 10 miles north of downtown Mobile. All three engines and four of the eight cars went off the bridge.

Brian Logan of Newport-on-Tay, Scotland, was awakened when the train began banking steeply to one side. "It kind of threw a lot of people off their seats. I figured the train was going to tumble over. . . . That was accompanied by a screeching sound followed by a pretty much lot of screaming."

One wrecked engine erupted in flame, setting the area aglow as survivors, joined by rescuers in helicopters and local people who came to the scene in boats, tried desperately to save fellow passengers.

Poor underwater visibility hampered rescuers. "Divers are having to go through [the submerged car] by hand," said Mobile police spokesman Tom Jennings.

The head of a diver team, William Woodail, said some of the dead remained in the sunken passenger car and some in a burned engine. At nightfall, the Coast Guard suspended the search for more bodies until daylight today.

The train carried 189 passengers and 17 crew members, Amtrak said.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB