Three men whose heroism was credited with saving scores of lives in the worst wreck in Amtrak's 22-year history vividly recounted on Monday the chaos and carnage in which 47 people died when their train plunged into an Alabama bayou this fall.
They told a National Transportation Safety Board hearing here of calming hysterical passengers on the Sunset Limited, hoisting them through the train's emergency windows and fishing them out of the murky Big Bayou Canot on a fog-shrouded night.Their accounts were confirmed by federal officials who had investigated the tragedy and marveled at how seemingly ordinary people took extraordinary risks to save the lives of others.
The men's testimony opened three days of hearings to determine why the Sunset Limited, en route from Los Angeles to Miami, plunged off the Bayou Canot Bridge. The hearings are also intended to find ways to guard against similar disasters in the future. Both the FBI and the Mobile County District Attorney's Office are conducting separate criminal investigations, though no charges have yet been filed.
The Sunset Limited crash occurred at 2:53 a.m. on Sept. 22, about five minutes after a towed barge hit the bridge, pushing the tracks out of alignment, federal investigators say.
Susan Coughlin, the safety board's vice chairwoman who is conducting the hearings, reinforced those preliminary findings on Monday, saying that laboratory tests showed that damage to the bridge was consistent with damage to the barges.
The final federal and local findings of the crash are also expected to figure prominently in the eventual assessment of liability in victims' lawsuits. The towboat's owner, Warrior and Gulf Navigation Co. of Mobile, blames Amtrak and CSX Transportation Inc., which owns the 500-foot-long bridge. The companies disagree over whether a bridge outside shipping lanes should have had lights and other safety devices.
The towboat Mauvilla had lost its way in fog and reported striking something in the bayou shortly before the train reached the bridge.