Train Crash Blamed On Flaw in Signal Light

A malfunctioning signal light, rewired last week, caused the fiery crash of two freight trains Friday night in Pico Rivera that killed a longtime Santa Fe Railroad supervisor and destroyed a cafe and vacant church, officials said Saturday.

Local and federal investigators who picked through the blackened wreckage said one freight train had erroneously been given a green light and was traveling at almost 45 m.p.h. when it slammed into a train stopped in a switching area near Serapis Avenue and Rivera Street at 10:35 p.m.

“I’ve been around railroads 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Santa Fe spokesman Thomas C. Buckley said.

John Riley, Federal Railroad Administration director, said “the signals should have avoided this accident” because a modernization of the electric signals was completed a few days ago. Railroad officials could not give details on the project.

Riley ordered the Santa Fe Railroad to operate its local trains with manual signals until the cause of the malfunction is determined.

A team including investigators from the railroad administration and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the possibility that the rewiring “may have been incorrectly performed,” Riley said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Four train cars and six locomotives were strewn along 150 yards of track and onto Serapis Avenue. Buckley estimated overall damage to the trains, twisted tracks and the two nearby buildings to be at least $2 million. Damage to the destroyed church and restaurant alone was estimated at about $135,000, according to county firefighters.

Witnesses and officials said about 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel, which spilled from the engines on the moving train, erupted in a huge fireball, eerily illuminating the night sky and shooting flames about 80 feet high as it engulfed the two buildings. The flaming liquid gushed along the pavement, setting fire to palm trees and telephone poles in its path.

Two railroad employees who jumped to safety from the moving train told investigators that they were standing at the front of the train with veteran supervisor E. J. Mulligan, 60, of San Bernardino, when they realized that they were going to crash.

Mulligan decided to jump from a different door, and his body was found burned beyond recognition in the tangled wreckage, fire officials said.

“They all sensed something was wrong--I don’t know if they saw the standard flashing warning light on the rear of the stopped train or what, but they jumped,” Buckley said. “One of them didn’t make it, and we don’t know why.”

Railway officials said Mulligan was a roving supervisor of operations who did not often ride that train.

The smoldering trains came to rest just 10 feet away from a small wooden house on Perkins Street where the Palomino family of 10 was sleeping. They were evacuated and given shelter by the Red Cross.

“I was getting ready for bed when I heard a very strong explosion,” Berta Palomino said. “I thought it was an earthquake. I grabbed my children and looked out the window and saw that everything was red and smoky. Our house was ringed by flames.”

Palomino, 42, said she and her husband Antonio, 41, roused their sleeping children and rounded up other family members. They all ran outside, barefoot and clad in nightclothes.

‘Looked Like Lightning’

“Fire was running down the street, lighting everything up, it even lit the palm trees and the telephone poles,” she said. “The telephone wires looked like lightning.”

Although their house was saved from the flames, the family’s Chevrolet pickup truck, parked in a vacant lot about 20 feet from the railroad tracks, was destroyed by the fire.

The Palominos were staying at a nearby hotel on Saturday, waiting for officials to allow them to return to their small house next door to the charred El Buen Gusto restaurant.

Across the street, the pastor of the burned Temple Bethesda church and his family were also evacuated from their home next to the church. They are believed to be staying with family members in El Monte. Palomino said the pastor had locked up the church only minutes before the crash.

Another 60 residents who did not live as close to the crash site were temporarily evacuated. Among them was 48-year-old Eufracia Maria and her family of 12, who had to spend the night without blankets and crammed in their covered truck.

Firefighter Injured

More than 100 firefighters battled intense heat and flames for about two hours, but only one firefighter suffered a minor injury to his ankle, county fire dispatcher Tom Nichols said.

As firefighters mopped up, about 75 railroad employees arrived early Saturday to move the derailed cars, locomotives and debris off the tracks with cranes and heavy equipment.

The derailment forced Amtrak, which rents the line from Santa Fe Railroad, to transfer thousands of passengers traveling between Los Angeles and San Diego onto hired charter buses for one leg of the journey. An Amtrak spokesman said only a few serious delays were reported before a track was cleared for their trains. Amtrak returned to normal by 4:50 p.m. Saturday, a railroad spokesman said.

Buckley said Santa Fe’s shipping operations were also temporarily disrupted, but that an alternate northern route to San Bernardino would be used until the tracks are back in working order.

Train’s ‘Black Box’

Meanwhile, Buckley said investigators have retrieved the train’s “black box” and will review what was said in the final moments before the crash.

He said investigators were also interviewing the two crew members who jumped safely from the train, engineer Brian C. Weber, 30, and brakeman Marvin L. Ditton, 37. They were treated for minor injuries and released from Pico Rivera Community Hospital early Saturday.

Officials predicted that it could take a week to determine the exact cause of the signal malfunction.

According to investigators, the crew on the Los Angeles-bound train had been given a green light about 1 mile east of the crash site. The stopped train, containing about 64 cars, was sitting on tracks when the 66-car train approached.

Buckley said that four crew members at the back of the moving train, and a small crew at the front of the stopped train, “felt little more than a jolt” when the crash occurred because they were all about three-quarters of a mile away from the point of impact.

Shook Floors, Rattled Windows

Witnesses said the collision and explosion shook floors and rattled windows in the neighborhood of small, single-family homes.