FORT LAUDERDALE — A Miami-bound Amtrak passenger train, three hours late and moving fast, ripped through a gasoline truck trapped on the tracks on Wednesday afternoon, igniting fireballs that killed six people.
The flames engulfed nine vehicles waiting for the train to pass the crossing, killing the truck driver, three people in a van and two in cars.
The engine and two of the train’s 11 cars also caught fire. All 121 people on the train survived, although six were injured.
“Everything was just a ball of flame,” said Branson Willis, a stockbroker who works in an office building near the tracks. “The fireball had to be 150-200 feet high. I saw a B-52 go down in Vietnam. That’s the only thing I can compare it to. The smoke and the fire were that incredible,”
The train, the Silver Star from New York, was rumbling toward the Fort Lauderdale Amtrak station when it slammed into a Hess truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline at 3:13 p.m.
The end of the tanker hung on the tracks on Cypress Creek Road just west of Interstate 95. It was caught in a traffic jam where three lanes merged into one.
When the crossing lights lit and the warning gate fell, the driver had nowhere to go.
“The train couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred yards away when the warning sounded,” said eyewitness Jeff Shapiro, 29, of Margate. “It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever witnessed. It kept coming, and it split this tanker in two. It went right through it.”
“Flames were running off the front of the engine, and then we heard boom, boom, boom,” said Louis King, a bulldozer operator at a nearby construction site. “It looked like a meteorite coming down the tracks, with the engine in flames and fire shooting down the back.”
Gasoline spilled everywhere, and a second later, it exploded, covering passenger cars waiting on the west side of the crossing with flames and flashing off the glass office buildings that line the tracks.
It happened so quickly that the motorists didn’t have a chance.
Seventy-seven firefighters from Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park, Broward Fire- Rescue and Pompano Beach fought the fire, hot enough to melt the aluminum tank truck and bubble the asphalt of Cypress Creek Road.
“There was burning fuel everywhere,” Fort Lauderdale Fire Department spokesman Stephen McInerny said. “We fought our way through the fire to the vehicles. Unfortunately, it was too late. These people died a horrible death.”
The train was rolling about 60 mph, the speed limit on that stretch of tracks, when the engineer saw the truck and grabbed the emergency brake, Amtrak officials said. But the engine was still moving at 45 mph when it slid through the intersection.
It rolled to a stop about 70 yards past the intersection, scorched and sooty, the engineer’s cabin smashed from the impact.
Willis heard the explosion and rushed for his office door. He watched the flames roll west, driven by gusty winds, and envelop the cars that had stopped for the train.
“Here’s this incredible scene with the Amtrak train — the front of the train is burned to bits — and there was a line of cars heading east at the crossing, and they were totally in flames, totally charred,” Willis said.
Broward sheriff’s Lt. Lee Kellogg was one of those caught in traffic when the tanker exploded.
As the fireball rushed toward him, he saw a man jump from a nearby car. He begged Kellogg to help his wife, sheriff’s spokesman George Crolius said.
It was already too late. “The flames were dancing at that time,” Crolius said, so Kellogg pulled the man to safety as flames engulfed both cars.
One of the victims was Yetta Hager, 78, who died in a Toyota Cressida, her husband, Arthur, 80, said. He was blown out the passenger-side door. He was burned on his face, arms and hands.
Randy Hanson of Boca Raton was eating at Bennigan’s on Cypress Creek Road when he heard the explosion. He rushed outside and saw two people running west.
“One guy was holding his head; his hair was burned off,” Hanson said.
And he saw a man in a minivan trapped in the flames.
“He was gripping the steering wheel, his mouth was gaping open and he was wrenching his body back and forth,” Hanson said. “Then the flames totally enveloped the van and he was just gone.”
Donald Ford of Pompano Beach, caught in traffic on the west side of the crash, rushed to help but was held back.
“I could see the people in their cars, the cars on fire,” he said. “The police wouldn’t let me go up to help because there was too much fire and smoke. I could see the people in the cars, but no one was able to do anything. I could see the people in the cars, but I didn’t know if they were alive or dead.”
None of the dead has been officially identified yet, Fort Lauderdale police spokeswoman Sonya Friedman said.
The bodies, burned beyond recognition, were still in the cars four hours after the crash. They were taken to the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office on Wednesday evening.
There, doctors and investigators worked to identify them.
They used a variety of tools, including dental records and some personal effects such as jewelry found among the wreckage. Most license plates, which would help make identification, melted in the flames.
About a dozen people suffered minor injuries, rescue workers said. Six passengers on the train were taken to the North Broward Medical Center in Pompano Beach, but none was expected to be admitted. A crew member was taken to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale for observation. The train carried 108 passengers and a crew of 13.
On the train, the end of the long trip came with a jolting finality.
“It picked me up out of my seat and slammed me into the seat in front of me,” said James Mullins, 21, of North Carolina. “There was silence for a minute, then smoke started rolling out from under the train. Then I saw the flames.”
Tanya Williams, 24, her husband, Everett, 28, and their 8-month-old daughter, Vannica, were returning from a pleasure trip to Port St. Lucie when “everything started popping.”
“We were yelling and cussing at each other, and the conductor was telling us to sit down and not panic,” Williams said. But when smoke started filtering through the cars, the passengers panicked.
“I accidentally pushed a lady off the steps, onto the rocks, trying to get out. I didn’t mean to do that,” she said.
Barbara Thompson, 25, of Orlando, carried her 22-month-old daughter, Amelia, from the train. Amelia had fallen to the floor in the collision, her mother said.
“When we heard the explosions, we got really nervous,” she said. “I ran with (Amelia) out the train. I just had visions of shrapnel and debris flying down on her. I was horrified. All I could think of was getting her out of the way. I carried her. I couldn’t let her try to walk.”
The passengers were taken to the nearby Crown Sterling Suites hotel for medical care and to use the phones before being taken to their destinations by charter bus.
Gary Wollenhaupt, a spokesman for CSX Transportation, which maintains and operates the tracks, said the crossing signals were working properly and the gates were down when the train hit.
“The engineer had a clear line of sight,” Wollenhaupt said. “He could see the signal arms. The engineer told us the gates were down.”
“Obviously, the truck was on the tracks,” Amtrak spokesman Howard Robertson said. “We’re not sure if he stalled, if he tried to beat it. We were sounding the horn. They were sounding it a long way off.”
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will begin looking into the crash this morning. Cypress Creek Road could be closed at the site of Wednesday’s crash for several days, officials said.
In Wednesday’s accident, the truck made its way onto the tracks as traffic merged into a single lane, but it should not have been there when the train passed through. Federal law and Amerada Hess Corp. policy say a driver must wait until he can pass completely through an intersection before entering it.
“We were shocked when we learned of the accident,” Vice President Carl Tursi said from the company’s headquarters in New York City. “These trucks are supposed to be extremely safe. But I don’t think anything is safe when it gets hit by a train like that.”
According to witnesses, though, there was no way the truck driver could have avoided being hit.
“I was about two feet in front of the tracks when the (warning) lights came on,” Shapiro said. “I knew I had to get out of the way. I could pull up a couple of feet, but this tanker is next to me. I’m thinking, ‘How is this tanker going to get out of the way?’
“I looked back, and I saw the train just before it hit the trailer. I couldn’t see the driver. I’m just watching the train and watching the trailer,” he said. “Horns were going crazy, people knew what was happening. People were screaming. It was mayhem.”
CSX Railroad officials said that several eyewitnesses told them the driver of the tanker had not stopped at the tracks and instead rolled through the crossing in an attempt to beat the oncoming Amtrak train.
“Witnesses said the gates at the track came crashing down on the truck over and over again because the trucker was stuck in the middle of the track. If he had stopped before he crossed the track, how did this happen?” CSX spokeswoman Donna Rohrer said.
Huey Manges, public safety director at Port Everglades, said the accident shocked port officials. “The truckers know what they’re supposed to do,” he said. “They are supposed to make a full stop regardless of whether the track’s gates are up or down.”
He said more than 1,000 tankers leave the port daily to deliver fuel.
—- Staff Writers Seth Borenstein, Alan Cherry, Chuck Clark, Kevin Davis, Ardy Friedberg, John Gittelsohn, Larry Keller, Kathleen Kernicky, Sallie James, Lyda Longa and Bob Lamendola contributed to this story.
DRIVER TIPS
— Proceed through a crossing only if you are sure you can cross entirely. Do not get trapped on the tracks.
— Never drive around lowered gates. If you suspect a signal is malfunctioning, call the police.
— Get out of your vehicle if it stalls on a crossing. Call the police.
— Watch out for a second train when crossing multiple tracks.
— Trains cannot stop quickly. Even if the engineer sees you, it can take up to 1 1/2 miles to stop once the emergency brakes are applied.
— A train’s large mass makes it almost impossible to accurately judge its speed.
