‘There’s another train on our track ...'

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 10

‘There’s another train on our track ...'

NZPA-Reuter Edmonton

Survivors yesterday told of trapped victims burning to death in a huge fireball that swept through the wreckage of a passenger train after a collision with a speeding freight train in which about 40 people were killed.

“I looked out the window and said to my buddies, ‘Oh my God, there is another train on our track’,” said Perry Warniski, aged 21, of Kamloops, British Columbia. “Then I saw a fireball, and I was on fire. My hair was on fire. Grain

started pouring on top of us, and put the fire out “It was a horror show,” said Doug Pongracz, also a British Columbia resident “The car burst into flames. We used fire extinguishers. That was like trying to throw a glass of water on the fire.

“You could see the insides of people on the track. There were parts of people all over the place. This is the worst thing Fve ever seen in my life. The cars were packed up like toothpicks,” he said. Mr Warniski said: “The people sitting across from us didn’t make it

They were all trapped. There were three friends travelling together and they took turns prying metal off of each other so they could escape,” Perry said. “One of my friends was trapped underneath me and he was on fire until the grain started pouring on us. Everyone sitting in front of us didn’t make it”

Witnesses said most of the passengers in the front cars of the sevencoach passenger train were trapped by the impact of the crash, which plied freight cars on top of the passenger cars,

and by the fire that engulfed the wreckage. Human error probably caused the collision, in one of Canada’s worst rail disasters, officials said.

The freight train, travelling about 70 km/h, apparently went through a stop signal and entered a single track. The collision happened in Hinton, Alberta, a town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains about 280 km from Edmonton. About 90 people were injured. A spokesman for Canadian National railways, Mr Ross Walker, said a preliminary investigation

revealed that there were only two possibilities for the accident

“One is a signal malfunction and the other is human error. There is no evidence at this time to indicate there was a problem with the signal,” Mr Walker said. He could not rule out a signal malfunction.

The passenger train, also going 70 km/h, smashed into the 114-car freight train and was virtually buried in the pile-up. Both engineers on the freight train were killed.

Most of the dead were in the first five cars of

the seven-car passenger train and survivors said victims were trapped by a fire that broke out seconds later. Officials said the fire was probably caused by diesel fuel leaking on to the passenger train from the freight train and igniting. At least 100 workers combed through the stillsmouldering ruins yesterday in an effort to remove charred bodies trapped inside the wreckage. Officials said it could take days before the final death toll was known because of an incomplete passengerlist.