Investigator: ‘They were going to run this train come hell or high water’

After an Amtrak train derailment killed three people near Dupont last December, the National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the tragic accident. Investigator John Hiatt spoke to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson to discuss what we know so far.

Report: Employees raised concerns before Amtrak train derailment

“There’s a lot of preliminary information. And what the NTSB  has released is basically excerpts out of people’s statements,” Hiatt said. “It does appear that they had 12 people off the record that were telling them — and these were employees — that they did not have a lot of confidence in the training methods that were used and that it was done rather hurriedly.”

Hiatt is an investigator with the Bremseth Law Firm which represents an Amtrak employee suing the train company.

Since the crash, it has been revealed that the engineer in the lead locomotive did not see any signs that would have signaled him to slow down. The train was traveling at about 78 mph into a 30 mph curve.

“In all reality, a mile and a half away from that site might be where a lot of people would start applying their brakes. Again, we’re taking bits and pieces out of his statement. I would like to see his whole statement. But it just really appears that he lost track of where he was at. In the industry it’s called situational awareness,” Hiatt explained.

There were two people in the lead locomotive at the time of the crash: the conductor trainee and the engineer. Allegedly, the engineer had only worked on that Dupont-area stretch of tracks one time, in the dark.

“That’s not enough,” Hiatt said. “If he thought he needed a supervisor certainly he had that ability to say so. But this goes back to what I think is the real root of the problem.”

That is, an apparent lack of training and what seems like a company rushing to meet a deadline.

“This is money. What this boils down to is money. They had the opportunity to remove that curve or to hyper-elevate that curve or to eliminate that curve or reduce that curve,” Hiatt said. “They had a lot of options. And they had the option of waiting until they had positive train control. But they had a deadline set. December 18, they were going to run this train come hell or high water. Unfortunately, I think they got a little bit of hell. They weren’t ready.”