A Missouri farmer said he warned the owner of the intersection railroad where an Amtrak train derailed Monday that the area was dangerous and urged others to proceed with caution a few weeks before the crash that caused the crash. death of three people and dozens more injured.
Local farmer Mike Spencer said he was not surprised by the derailment near Mendon and argued it could have been avoided because he said the railroad was aware the “uncontrolled” passage was unsafe.
“That was almost a no-brainer,” he told the Kansas City Star. “I predicted this would happen. I was sure this would happen. It was just a matter of time.”
In his June 11 Facebook post about the railroad crossing, Spencer included a video showing a train approaching Porche Prairie Avenue at high speed.
“We have to cross this with agricultural machinery to reach several of our fields,” he wrote at the time. “We’ve been in the RR for several years to fix the approach by building the road, placing signs, signal lights or just cutting the brush.
The eight-car Amtrak train carrying 275 passengers went off the track near Mendon, Missouri, Monday after hitting a dump truck in one step.
“This train only moves at about 45-50, but some go between 70 and 90 mph.”
Spencer warned anyone crossing the tracks with a vehicle that “approaches very slowly and then looks two-way” because there are about 85 trains passing through the intersection every day.
Both Spencer and another local farmer, Daryl Jacobs, said the approach to the intersection is very steep (about 9 feet from the flat road to the top of the track) and that part of it is obstructed by a brush.
“We have to cross it with agricultural machinery, loaded grain trucks,” he told the Spencer newspaper, which grows soybeans and corn on the farmland surrounding the pass. “We have no choice but to cross this road. It’s very treacherous.”
The train was carrying 275 passengers from Los Angeles to Chicago when it collided with a dump truck at a remote intersection of a gravel road with no lights or electronic controls, the chief said. Justin Dunn of the Missouri State Road Patrol at a press conference.
Among the dead were two people inside the train and one in the dump truck.
Spencer said he and other community members have spent the past three years talking to BNSF Railway, the owner of the track, a Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) safety engineer and a Chariton County commissioner to try to improve. security on the way, but nothing has been done.
Local farmers said transport and rail officials were aware the crossing was dangerous because it was not equipped with any warning signs. Dax McDonald via REUTERS
Spencer, who is on the board of a local dyke district, said the driver of the dump truck was transporting rocks to a dike (an embankment built to prevent flooding of a waterway) in a local stream, a project that was underway for a couple of days. .
Nearly half of Missouri’s 3,800 railroad crossings are not equipped with safety features. Improvements to the Mendon Pass were pending, according to MoDOT.
“That’s on the shoulders of the railroad,” Spencer said. “They’ve known this is a problem.”
MoDOT did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
About 50 people were hospitalized after the derailment, Amtrak’s second in as many days. Dax McDonald via Storyful
In Monday’s derailment, seven of the eight cars went off the track after the train collided with the dump truck at the intersection, sending at least 50 people to the hospital with injuries.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said it was too early to know why the truck was on the tracks.
With post cables