Amtrak Derailment Philadelphia (5/12/2015)

[fairviewroad]

Who here knows what the conductor was doing in that single minute... maybe in the john,

According to this article, that is the correct answer, at least for the head conductor.

 

[caravanman]

Ooops, that was a bit weird, I had no idea! I may have to start up as a paranormal detective on the side.

Ed

 

[jis]

Ooops, that was a bit weird, I had no idea! I may have to start up as a paranormal detective on the side.

Ed

Well done Ed!

 

[PRR 60]

A chilling tale from a survivor of Train 188 with some not so kind things to say about Amtrak and Amtrak's response to the accident:

From Politico Magazine, May 19, 2015:

I’ve spent much of my career helping with disasters, helping people and organizations at some of the worst times of their lives. I was always lucky enough not to need the help of people like me. That ended last week, after I boarded Amtrak Train 188. I’m now even more grateful for our first responders—police, fire, EMTs and hospital emergency rooms. And more convinced that Amtrak itself needs an overhaul.

Politico Magazine

 

[City of Miami]

He spent much too much ink tooting his own horn IMO, thereby invalidating himself. What exactly did he want Amtrak reps to do in addition to what was being done by everyone? Hand out packets of money?

 

[TiBike]

I think what he wanted Amtrak to do was what airlines do in similar circumstances: let the emergency services people do their job and then take care of the passengers and next of kin on the spot. Make sure they're OK for the night -- hotel rooms would be appropriate, for example -- and give them a clear path to putting everything in order in the morning. Don't just send them into an endless cycle of filling out forms and calling customer service call centers.

It sounds like there was no plan for this kind of event, and no Amtrak employee willing to take personal responsibility for acting until someone eventually put a plan together days later.

When I got Boardman's email about how they had set up a family assistance center within 24 hours, I thought it was odd. 24 hours is way to long to wait. They should have known what to do immediately and begin implementing it within 24 minutes. And that's a generous amount of time.

When something like this happens employees need to know what to do, and they need to take immediate responsibility for solving problems that aren't covered in the plans. Management failed by not having an adequate plan in place; the workforce failed by not taking the initiative. This was a disaster situation, not the waiting room at the DMV.

 

[andersone]

interesting read,,, Amtrak should hire him and let him set up a system,,,, I know what we have in place where I work and it is super sophisticated, but thankfully we have never had to use save for drills !!

I remember a plane crash in Sioux City Iowa where the response was awesome,,, it can be done it just takes planning (sarcasm font not found)

 

[jis]

After the Asiana Airlines crash in SFO initially Asiana had problems setting things up. Within hours United (their Star Alliance partner in US) took over responsibility from them and things went relatively smoothly thereafter. Notwithstanding that FAA fined Asiana and United AFAIR, for their inability to do the initial handling of customers properly. If Asiana did not manage to get United to take over customer handling they might have gotten into a situation like Amtrak found itself in and would have been in very deep doo doo with the FAA. I don't think FRA even has any guidelines on what to do about such things relative to the poor passengers, let alone Amtrak.

Again I could be completely wrong due to my own ignorance. But I have not found any indication to believe otherwise.

 

[TiBike]

Interesting. Here's the link to the DOT's statement on the fine:

http://www.dot.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-fines-asiana-airlines-not-adhering-family-assistance-plan

From the statement:

For approximately one day following the crash, Asiana failed to widely publicize any telephone number for family members of those onboard, and the only number generally available to the public that family members could call was Asiana’s toll-free reservations line. Locating this phone number on Asiana’s website required significant effort. The reservations line did not include a separate menu option for calls related to the crash and callers were required to navigate through cumbersome automated menus before being connected to an Asiana employee.

I wonder if there are similar rules for trains?

 

[Bob Dylan]

Based on the above posts plus all the millions of articles, blogs,media reports and other threads here on AU plus other rail sites, the #188 Tragedy was well handled by the people aboard the train,crews and passengers, the PHL first reaponders and the NTSB and other Federal agencies!

The initial response by Amtrak Management was based on the Invisible Man Plan! ( I'm of the mind that they didn't have a plan for situations like this)

The follow up by the Amtrak Track Gangs and their contractors was magnificent!

Most of Amtrak's top management response initially seemed to consist of silence followed PR Spin, BS and Smoke and Mirrors boilerplate!

The Customer Service and Communications departments did a terrible job, some heads should roll in the executive suites @ Amtrak over these fiascos! YMMV

 

[user 1215]

Who here knows what the conductor was doing in that single minute... maybe in the john,

According to this article, that is the correct answer, at least for the head conductor.

I opened that link, and I swear the article headline was that the head conductor felt a sudden urge.

 

[Acela150]

Fair enough, I have been doing qualifying runs on the keystone corridor and NEC the past two weeks. I've been on AEM-7's, ACS-64's, and an Acela set. I'm well aware of the acceleration rate and how smooth the trackage can be. It's wildly different then 2 GEVO's.

I have been on many many trains that go East through Frankford Junction. Even as a passenger I've grown to know where I am and the speeds the trains go, Acela, Regional, LD, etc. At all times of day and night in all kinds of weather.

But I will maintain that a good Conductor and Engineer should know where they are at all times. I think this is something that any railroad employee can agree on. I'm just curious as to why the Conductors didn't think that something was off. I understand that ticket scanning/collection and assisting passengers is part of the job.

Once again, no one disputes that. What is being said is any train in that area accelerates. This includes Septa trains. Can you tell the difference between in speed? Where is the normal braking point for the curve? Are you aware that people run trains differently? How much time did that crew have together so the crew could even determine the engineer's style? Even if you think something is amiss, this happened in less time than it takes to make this post as Cirdan mentioned above. Again, just because you stared out the window of an ACS,AEM-7 or some type of equipment means zilch if you weren't performing other tasks.

Acela150, on 19 May 2015 - 11:46 PM, said:'m not pointing a finger. (If it seems like that I apologize)

Is that a fact? Your previous post tells a different story;

I read that an Amtrak conductor who was on the train is suing Amtrak.

I'll give you my two cents on this. The conductors are qualified on that territory. Why didn't any of them say "We're going to fast for this area" and pull a brake? These conductors, IMO are just as at fault as the engineer.

This definitely more than SEEMS like you're pointing a finger. You're pointing a whole hand and a foot...that is now in your mouth.

Do you even know where they found the conductor of this train? How much time did the rest of the crew have? Were they even qualified?

I kind of remember Ryan coming to your defense by saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that it is something to sit back on the internet and critique someones work ethic when they suggested that NS would wash you out because you're a foamer.

It looks like he was on to something...in more ways than one.

The one thing that is in that post is a question mark. You can call me a foamer, jerk, a**hole, whatever you want. I'm well aware that you have a tendency to attack other users on other forums on the internet. I'm not going to let you bother me. Why should I?

 

[west point]

Amtrak should have disaster plans and a book(s). These plans must be generalized for the various sections of each route. Believe that there was a delay from the Carolinian incident as well. The major airlines have books and books based of whatever location in the world an incident happens.

Who to notify, What happened, where, when, Who to notify. etc.

Also responsibility of each person who is involved in an incident.

 

[trainman74]

For approximately one day following the crash, Asiana failed to widely publicize any telephone number for family members of those onboard...

I wonder if there are similar rules for trains?

I don't think there are any formal rules, as others have said in this thread. Amtrak did have a phone number available within a couple of hours after the accident:

 

[FormerOBS]

There are so many possible variables in a train wreck that a single specific protocol would be impossible to devise and impossible to implement. You can't predict the extent of damage, location of damage in the train, location of the accident on the railroad, presence or absence of other traffic, numbers of passenger casualties, numbers of crew casualties, rank/authority of available crew members, presence or absence of fire, nearness of EMT/rescue services, nearness of trauma centers, and so many other variables that it boggles the imagination. In response to the Politico article, I commented that the article presumes that the five Amtrak crew members (at least two of whom were very seriously hurt) should have done more, and it points out that the Philadelphia First Responders did an excellent job when they arrived. This is, indeed, something that the people of Philadelphia should be proud of, but it merely reflects the fact that those emergency personnel are trained and equipped to deal with such events. That's why we have them. The five Amtrak crew members did receive some level of emergency training, but they cannot be trained and equipped in the same way that First Responders are, and it should be no surprise that they were not very effective in dealing with the masses of injuries and deaths among the 240+ passengers.

Afterwards, the author of the Politico piece complains that it was six hours before he was interviewed by an Amtrak representative. I'm sure everybody at Amtrak would be happy if they could interview everybody right away. In this case, there were over 240 passengers who were dispersed among at least four different hospitals and numerous other locations. I don't know how many authorized representatives Amtrak could muster on short notice, late at night. The author admits that his injuries were relatively minor, yet he is so self-absorbed that he has the gall to complain that he wasn't among the first. Frankly, I don't know whether Amtrak could have done better in the circumstances, but this man's biased first-person account doesn't convince me.

In defense of Amtrak employees (as opposed to Amtrak Managers), I have to ask whether you would feel making promises to accident victims if you knew your employer was actively punishing employees for infractions such as serving complimentary coffee during unauthorized hours.

I posted some of these points on the Politico site, but discovered that the people on that site were more interested in making general complaints about Amtrak than in addressing the issues actually discussed in the article. So much for discourse.

Tom

 

[FormerOBS]

Please forgive some grammatical errors in the previous post. The system would not accept my edits --- again.

Tom

 

[Bob Dylan]

Another excellent post from one who has actually been there!

Excellent point about separating those who do the actual work from the suits in Amtrak management who played the Invisible Man for too long!

And the self important jerk who did the Politico article should get hired by the TV Networks to join their "experts" cadre!!

 

[TiBike]

It's not the response of the onboard crew that's being questioned; they were victims of the accident like everyone else. It was the response by the rest of the organisation. I have no doubt management failed to plan adequately, but staff also failed to show initiative. The article describes people who were only willing to operate within their comfort zone: hand out forms, refer to a call center, fill out another form, call somewhere else. There's no indication anyone was taking responsibility for solving whatever problem was in front of them, just passing it on to someone else.

This didn't happen in the middle of the Nevada desert. It happened on Amtrak's busiest corridor, in one of the biggest cities it serves, a two hour drive from headquarters. The fact is, you can plan for emergencies. The Philadelphia first responders proved that. You can't give everyone a scripted procedure to follow -- it would be foolish to try. But there are common, basic elements you can anticipate, like making sure there's adequate food and shelter, dealing with lost luggage, making ongoing connections, following up on injuries. Standard operating procedures won't work -- as the article described -- so you have to have a way to deal with 240 people who have all of those issues all at once.

There has to be a plan and people willing and able to take responsibility for implementing it, knowing they'll have to take decisions they wouldn't under normal circumstances.

 

[caravanman]

Hmm, Head conductor... they call the rest rooms the "heads" on a ship... maybe he was in the correct place!

When I worked on British Rail... (yawn, yawn, here he goes again...) we had specific responsibilities in case of derailment, especially where an adjacent line was obstructed. The driver / engineer would go ahead and protect the adjacent tracks from oncoming trains, and the guard (your conductor) would go to the rear and protect there. We used detonators affixed to the rails, red flags and red lamps. Within an area controlled by electric signals, we had track circuit clips, which when attached across the rails, would turn signals to red. This was always our first priority, then deal with the accident itself...

I am going back over 30 years ago, so procedures may be quite different now, but back then it would be a railmans second nature to know what to do without thinking. Injuries were never mentioned in our training!

Ed

 

[Guest]

We used detonators affixed to the rails,

Yet another difference between US English and UK English. For us, a detonator would be an explosive charge.

 

[John Bobinyec]

We used detonators affixed to the rails,

Yet another difference between US English and UK English. For us, a detonator would be an explosive charge.

Here we call the rail-top explosive charges - torpedoes.

jb

 

[Ziv]

Back in the 60's and 70's my father was a brakeman for Great Northern and then a conductor for Burlington Northern and they called them torpedos too. I always thought that that sounded illogical and detonators actually makes more sense, because that is what they do. Nothing like the equivalent of a cherry bomb going off under your locomotive to get your engineer's attention.

We used detonators affixed to the rails,

Yet another difference between US English and UK English. For us, a detonator would be an explosive charge.

Here we call the rail-top explosive charges - torpedoes.

jb

 

[Ryan]

By way of further explanation for our guest, small explosive charge is exactly what they are. Put them on the rail, and if a train runs over it, it goes off. Makes a big bang and tells the engineer "Hey, something's probably wrong here!".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator_(railway)

 

[jis]

The possible "something wrong" can be something as mundane as "the signal that you can't see in the pea soup fog is Red"

 

[Guest]

By way of further explanation for our guest, small explosive charge is exactly what they are. Put them on the rail, and if a train runs over it, it goes off. Makes a big bang and tells the engineer "Hey, something's probably wrong here!".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator_(railway)

Oh, that isn't what I was envisioning. Thanks. I was, now incorrectly, thinking that it was something we would call a flare.

To me, a detonator would be something that would blow up the rail, severing it into pieces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-4_(explosive)