ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 16, 1996 TAG: 9602160053
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ST. PAUL, MINN.
SOURCE: Associated Press
Sabotage was suspected Thursday in the wreck of a runaway freight train that slammed into a railyard building, hurling steel wreckage just short of an employee lunchroom and injuring nine men.
``There appears to have been some tampering with the train. As a result, we have called in the FBI,'' said Dick Russack, a spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe in Illinois.
Russack said the brakes clearly failed, but he would not elaborate on why sabotage was suspected.
FBI spokeswoman Coleen Rowley refused to comment.
The train, hauling lumber, grain and other cargo, left a Burlington Northern yard in Minneapolis on Wednesday night, bound for Galesburg, Ill.
It descended a hill into a Canadian Pacific Railroad yard in St. Paul, speeding out of control at 40 to 50 mph. It crashed into locomotives parked outside a one-story office and flattened most of the building.
The wreckage stopped five feet from the lunchroom, said Mike Johnson, a freight car inspector for Canadian Pacific. He said he was sure people would have been killed if the parked locomotives had not slowed the train.
A rail worker was pinned beneath a car holding 15 tons of grain. Rescuers working in below-zero wind chills freed him after digging him into the frozen ground so they could jack up the car.
None of the other injuries, mostly broken bones and sprains, was believed to be life-threatening. Five men were treated and released.
Russack said the train was inspected and everything checked out fine before it left the Northtown yard. The train then made a brief, routine stop about eight miles before the accident site to let another train go by.
``The one thing we know is that the brakes did not have the air pressure they needed. Now, why? We don't know,'' said John Bergene, a Canadian Pacific spokesman. Braking power comes from air pressure carried in hoses from the locomotives to the rail cars.
Forty-four cars and six locomotives derailed, leaving wreckage so mangled that workers had trouble telling which cars came from which train. Some cars in the zigzagging wreckage were upside down, some on top of each other.
``It's amazing there was not any explosion and fire,'' said Mike McDonough, a Canadian Pacific electrician.
Rail worker Warren Lear, speaking from his hospital bed, said he and his colleagues were discussing a college basketball game when they heard about a runaway train on a radio. Then came the rumble like ``a huge thunder.''
``Everyone ran out,'' Johnson said. ``I didn't know what way to go.''
So he just went down and covered his head.
``When I fell, I thought the train was going to run over me,'' Lear said. ``The only thing I can explain is God was with us. I don't know how. It was a miracle.''
Lear's foot was pinned between a knocked-down wall and the floor.
``All I remember is hitting the floor and I couldn't move my foot. Then I smelled diesel fuel,'' Lear said. It took about an hour for rescuers to free Lear's foot, but he lost his big toe and part of another toe.
In October, an Amtrak train derailed on a sabotaged stretch of track in a desert gulch near Hyder, Ariz. One person was killed and 78 were injured.
Investigators said a saboteur removed a metal bar holding rail sections together, pulled 29 spikes from the rail and rewired a safety mechanism that would have warned the crew of a break in the track. No arrests have been made.
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported that investigators were studying whether sabotage caused a freight train wreck Feb. 1 in Southern California in which two people were killed.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Workers sift through debris in St. Paul, Minn.,by CNBThursday after a runaway train slammed into a rail office building.
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