A pair of freight trains collided head-on and exploded into flames Tuesday morning in the Texas Panhandle, and there were reports that three crew members were missing.
The collision was about five miles from the town of Panhandle, about 30 miles northeast of Amarillo, on tracks that run alongside U.S. Route 60. Both trains were identified as belonging to BNSF, one of the nation’s largest freight railroads, and each had two crew members.
The trains’ cargo had not been determined. Deep black smoke was billowing from the wreckage. Witnesses said most of the cars strewn around the crash site appeared to be box cars.
“I don’t know how anyone survived,” Billy Brown, a farmer in the area, told The Associated Press. “It’s terrible. I’ve seen a number of train wrecks, but I’ve never seen one like this.”
Investigators from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) arrived at the scene before noon, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it was also dispatching a team.
BNSF spokesman Joe Faust said it was unclear how fast the trains were traveling when they collided, but the speed limit on those tracks is 70 mph. Faust said one crew member jumped from the train before they collided.
BNSF has been a leader among freight railroads in embracing a technology intended to prevent just the kind of head-on collision that apparently occurred Tuesday. The system of onboard electronics and wayside towers known as Positive Train Control (PTC) would automatically apply braking systems if two trains were operating on the same set of tracks.
BNSF has notified the railroad administration that it intends to have its PTC system fully operational to meet a 2018 federal deadline, but some railroads have been turning their systems on piecemeal as the technology is put in place. It was unclear whether PTC was operational on the BNSF trains and the tracks on which they were traveling.
PTC, long sought by the NTSB and FRA, was the focus of an investigation last year in Philadelphia after an Amtrak train went into a curve at twice the posted speed limit, derailing in a wreck that killed eight people and injured 159. If PTC had been turned on in the Amtrak system, investigators found, it would have slowed the train and prevented the accident.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Ashley Halsey III
