08x41 -Visibility Zero

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

[train whistle blowing]

NARRATOR: In the Amtrak railroad

experienced the deadliest train crash

in the United States history.

[train crashing]

NARRATOR: passengers and crew were k*lled.

more were injured.

The cause of the accident was unclear.

The clues to this mystery were etched in twisted steel,

and burried in the mud of an Alabama bayou waiting

for investigators to find them.

[theme music]

[train whistle blowing]

Amtrak Sunset Limited is the country's only remaining

transcontinental train.

AMY GREER-THOMPSON: Sunset Limited

has an interesting history, kind of dates

back to the romantic time of train travel,

when it was very elegant and posh to travel by train.

NARRATOR: On September , Trudy Justin and her husband,

Larry, boarded the Sunset Limited in Deming,

New Mexico headed for Florida.

TRUDY JUSTIN: And I could sit there, and look,

and talk to other people.

But the best part is going to the dining car.

We went to the dining car three times a day.

And you'd just trot back over, and they

were really nice to you.

NARRATOR: After dinner, Trudy and Larry returned

to their seats to rest.

The train stopped briefly in New Orleans

to fix a broken air conditioner.

By : a.m. it was running about

minutes behind schedule.

It stopped in Mobile, Alabama, where

the engineer waited until a freight train

cleared the bridge up ahead.

Then the Sunset Limited started on the last leg of it's

trip, miles to Miami.

The train throttled up to a cruising speed

of miles an hour, but visability was hindered by fog.

Shortly before three AM, the Sunset Limited approached

the Bayou Canot bridge.

[crashing noise] In a matter of seconds,

the trains three engines and next four cars

plummeted into the water.

The engine's fuel tanks ruptured,

igniting the diesel fuel.

TRUDY JUSTIN: Then they people start yelling,

"We got to get out of here, because this

is going to explode. "

NARRATOR: The tugboat, Mauvilla, was the first to report

the accident.

MAN [ON RADIO]: [inaudible] where at below the [inaudible].

They the [inaudible] be no fire [inaudible].

It's so foggy I can't tell.

Just have a look on my radar, so there's something

bad, wrong [inaudible].

It was a hell on earth kind of an environment.

It was just a horrific, horrific sight.

NARRATOR: Trudy grabbed her husband,

Larry, and swam for shore.

TRUDY JUSTIN: The fire just was getting bigger.

You see nothing.

I heard people saying, "Oh, we're going to die.

We're going to die. " And I heard the Lord's Prayer.

NARRATOR: The Mauvilla headed towards the flames,

through the dense fog, to investigate.

TRUDY JUSTIN: I didn't know where the boat came from.

We had no idea.

All we know is the spotlights on us.

And, of course, we could see that it

was-- you could hear it.

NARRATOR: The crew pulled passengers from the water.

Others were less fortunate.

AMY GREER-THOMPSON: The parent's of a little girl-- she was

years old and handicapped-- they

pushed her to the arms of a rescuer

through a window on their car.

And they didn't make it out.

NARRATOR: Of the passengers and crew on board,

people were dead or unaccounted for.

The FBI immediately flew to the crash site

to investigate the possibility of terrorism.

The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board

also sent investigators.

RICHARD E. WELLS: The lead locomotive

was found buried in the mud at about a degree angle,

and / of it you could not see.

It just buried itself into the marsh.

NARRATOR: A second engine was alongside.

A third was on the opposite side of the bridge.

Four derailed cars were nearby.

As a local salvage crew began the grim task of pulling

the dead from the bayou, investigators

wanted to know what caused the deadliest

accident in Amtrak history.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: In the early hours of September , ,

Amtrak's Sunset Limited plummeted off the Bayou Canot

bridge in Alabama k*lling passengers

and five crew members.

minutes before the Sunset Limited derailed a freight

train crossed the bridge in the opposite direction

without incident.

So what happened in those minutes?

NARRATOR: Divers recovered the trains event recorder

from the bayou, which is like an airline's flight data recorder.

The tape revealed the train was traveling at miles per hour,

and there was no break application.

Whatever caused the crash, the engineer never saw it.

Investigators also discovered the signals on the track

were green.

W. GENE CORELY: The signals are controlled by a current

that goes through the rail.

And if the rail breaks, the signal

will immediately turn red.

So the signal didn't turn red.

NARRATOR: The bridge was originally

built in three sections.

The southern section was a foot steel truss bridge.

The center section, a single foot steel girder,

was originally designed to pivot so river

traffic could pass through.

The northern section was simply feet of track laid

on top of a wooden trestle.

The center section was totally destroyed.

NARRATOR: Despite it's design, the swing feature of the bridge

was never used.

And investigators discovered it wasn't connected properly.

W. GENE CORELY: Since they never did use it as a swing bridge,

they never did put in the same amount of tie downs

at the ends of the bridge to hold it in place.

NARRATOR: Divers also examined the wood pilings

that supported the bridge.

ALBERT L. DeBONIS: We wanted to determine if the piles had

undergone any kind of, deterioration, such as damage

from wood destroying organisms-- like soft rot or brown rot

decay.

NARRATOR: Under a powerful microscope,

scientists examined the cell walls of the samples.

They looked for triangular shaped

microorganisms like these, which would indicate rot.

ALBERT L. DeBONIS: Since we didn't find them present,

then we were fairly comfortable that there

was no appreciable deterioration of the piles,

contributing to the collapse.

NARRATOR: All that remained were three concrete piers.

When investigators looked more closely,

they discovered that the steel plates used

to connect the bridge to the concrete

were displaced inches out of alignment.

Corely also examined the bolts that attached the metal

plates to the concrete.

W. GENE CORELY: Those attachments

were poorly maintained.

In several cases, the holes that we're

supposed to have bolts through them

didn't have anything recognizable in them.

When we took the material out that was in those holes,

we found that it was rust.

NARRATOR: When the Sunset Limited was pulled out

of the water of Bayou Canot with sections of the bridge,

it was evident that something terrible had happened.

Investigators found that one of it's sides, a metal girder,

had been sheared ofr-- as if struck on the end

by a powerful force.

Corely measured the spacing of the girders

rivets and compared them to scratches along the side

of the train's engine.

W. GENE CORELY: The rivets made lines

down the side of the engine.

And you could match the lines made by those rivets

with the bridge and confirm that that was what destroyed

the grider on the bridge.

NARRATOR: But how did the train hit the outside of the bridge?

While structural engineers examined all the evidence,

Coast Guard investigators began interviewing eyewitnesses.

What they were about to learn would provide a surprising lead

to the investigation.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: Investigators had many questions,

but few answers to what caused the crash

of Amtrak's Sunset Limited.

Coast Guard investigators also interviewed the men and women

who helped in the rescue.

RICHARD E. WELLS: My first stop was actually

to interview the crew of the tugboat, Mauvilla,

and that was because they were the reporting

party of the accident.

NARRATOR: On the night of the crash,

the Mauvilla was making a routine run

up the Mobile River pushing a load of coal and pig iron.

The Mauvilla was pushing six barges,

so the pilot was feet away from the front of the barges.

Investigators learned that the pilot, Willy Odom,

called the Coast Guard, three hours before the train crash,

to report thick fog on the Mobile River.

About a half hour before the accident,

Odom said he steered his six barges around a bend

in the Mobile River and saw what appeared to be

another tugboat on his radar.

He said he steered towards it hoping to tie onto it

until visibility improved.

But before that could happen Willy Odom

said his tugboat ran aground.

At this point Captain Andrew Stabler

took over command of the Mauvilla

and called the Coast Guard asking for help.

MAN [ON RADIO]: [inaudible] to have a cable

or something rammed in the wheel, barges afloat,

adrift, southbound.

And if anybody down there can help rounded them up,

I would definitely appreciate it.

NARRATOR: Around : AM the Mauvilla's crew heard a crash,

then saw a fire through the fog.

MAN [ON RADIO]: I'm not sure what I'm seeing,

but I'm seeing something that's burning.

And it looks like it's crossways of the river.

How it got out that far, if that's what I'm looking at,

I don't have any idea.

NARRATOR: But if the Mauvilla was on the Mobile River,

how were they able to see an accident on the Bayou

Canot six miles away.

MAN [ON RADIO]: [inaudible] Mobile Coast Guard.

We have got a mess up here.

This train has run off the -mile railroad bridge.

NARRATOR: But that was a mistake.

The accident was on the bridge going across the Bayou Canot--

a waterway that was closed to commercial boat traffic.

Bayou Canot is a subsidiary of the Mobile River.

And in that very dense fog, the operator of the tug

mistakenly turned down into Bayou Canot,

thinking it was a bend in the river

a couple miles further up river than where he really was.

NARRATOR: But how could this happen?

Investigators discovered that the Mauvilla had no maps

on board, or even a compass.

That's a very important thing.

But the people in the river don't look at it that way.

All you do is steer between the banks, and that's it.

NARRATOR: The Mauvilla was equipped with radar, which

wasn't required at the time.

But the pilot, Willie Odum, wasn't trained to use it.

In conclusion, he didn't know anything about the radar.

He could turn it on.

He could look at it and tell you there's a picture on there.

But he didn't now anything about the function of the radar.

NARRATOR: When investigators heard Odum's story,

they went back to the bridge to examine what now seems

like a key piece of evidence.

The railroad bridge had a concrete pier that was holding

up the bridge structure.

And there was very fresh damage to the concrete

of the bridge pier.

NARRATOR: Something had hit the point of the pier.

Was it one of the Mauvilla's barges?

Had the Mauvilla caused the Sunset Limited to derail?

When we found the left hand barge,

there was a similar mark of spray paint and an indentation

into the middle.

And in fact, it kind of looked t-shaped, which would indicate

that the barge hit the top or flat portion,

as well as the edge of it.

And that kind of gave it a little t-shaped mark.

NARRATOR: The other barges revealed more surprising clues.

The center barge also had damage.

There were vertical scrapes and an indentation.

A clue to the cause of the scrapes

was found on the bridge's center span.

When we pulled the girder out of the water,

we did a visual inspection.

And we noticed the some of the vertical steel members

called stiffeners, that were on the side of the girder,

had been bent flat against the girder.

NARRATOR: Investigators measured the distance

between the stiffeners and compared them

to the vertical marks on the barge.

They were a perfect match.

Now they had solid evidence to prove

what caused the fatal crash of the Sunset Limited.

Authorities knew that the tugboat Mauvilla

was in the vicinity of the Bayou Canot bridge

shortly before the train crash-- and not on the Mobile

River, as the pilot thought.

Investigators discovered concrete chips

on the Mauvilla's front left barge.

The chips, along with samples from the bridge's pier,

were sent to the FBI for analysis.

Each mix of concrete is unique.

It has a specific amount of rocks,

sand, cement, and water in it.

The investigators cut the concrete samples

into razor-thin slices, then studied them under

a transmitter light microscope.

The microscope shines polarized light through the samples,

revealing the specific optical properties

of the rocks, sand, and cement.

The FBI, after they examined the samples they found

on the barge, determined that the concrete on the barge

was the same as that found in the pier

at the south end of the bridge.

NARRATOR: Based on all the evidence,

the National Transportation Safety Board

concluded that Willie Odum had gotten lost in the heavy fog

as he piloted the Mauvilla up the Mobile River.

With no maps or compass on board,

Odum wasn't trained to read the boat's radar.

He mistakenly feared left onto the Bayou Canot,

instead of continuing up the Mobile River.

Odum then mistook the radar image of the bridge

for another tow barge.

As he tried to maneuver towards it,

his front left barge struck the concrete south pier.

the other two barges struck the bridge itself,

knocking the bridge, and the train track, inches out

of alignment.

When Odum struck the bridge, he didn't know it,

in part because he couldn't see the bridge through the fog

since it was unlighted.

Odum mistakenly believed he had run aground.

Inexplicably, the collisions bent the track in an S shape

but didn't break it, which explains why

the electrical current running through the cracks

didn't break either.

Had the track been severed, sure,

that signal would have gone off down the line.

And there would've been a warning in Mobile

that something was wrong at the track over Bayou Canot.

NARRATOR: Coast guard records show the Mauvilla struck

the bridge only eight minutes before the Sunset

Limited arrived.

As the engineer headed towards the bridge,

he saw a green light telling him the track ahead was all clear.

As the train approached, I believed that the engine

derailed just as it was getting to the portion of the bridge

that had been moved sideways.

And it hit that portion of the bridge,

dragging the entire bridge, along with the engines,

and destroying it.

It's a big piece of steel out on the bridge.

And the train struck it at miles an hour.

And then, from that, you can tell that it

just tore the hell out of it.

NARRATOR: As the track collapsed,

the lead engine, and the next four cars, flew into the water.

Some of the passenger cars stopped on the bridge,

or the fatality count might have been higher.

Tragically, the train was running

about a half hour late due to the stop

to repair the air conditioning.

Had the train been on time, it would

have crossed the bridge before the Mauvilla ran into it.

I think this investigation just confirmed

for me a couple of longstanding philosophies that I've had.

One is that every accident is kind of a chain reaction.

There's five or six links in the chain

that all have to happen in order for an accident to happen.

They never did put in the same amount of tie downs

at the ends of the bridge to hold it in place.

Therefore, it wasn't as resistant to a barge hitting it

as it would have been if they had tied it down at the ends

better.

People cause accidents.

And that was clearly the case here.

PREACHER: The Lord is my shepherd,

therefore can I lack nothing.

He feeds me at a green pasture and leads me

beside the waters of comfort.

NARRATOR: A year after the accident,

survivors gathered to remember those who lost their lives.

By then, new regulations were in place

to prevent similar accidents.

Tug boats are now required to have radar on board.

And all operators are required to have formal training

in how to use it.

The boats are also required to have a compass on board,

as well as the necessary maps and river charts.

If the Mauvilla had only had a compass onboard,

this accident might never have happened.

Had there been a compass, Willie Odum

might have realized he was making a left turn

and not gone down the wrong channel into Bayou Canot.

NARRATOR: There's also a requirement for all bridges

to have lighting, even those on waterways

closed to commercial traffic.

Willie Odum was cleared of any criminal charges.

But he never again piloted a tugboat.

I think my main interest in all of the jobs I get into

is to determine what went wrong so that we can learn

from the bad things that have happened in the past

and do better in the future.

I can't prevent what's happened.

But if I learned lessons from it and then make changes in rules,

regulations, and procedures, I've done a lot to prevent

that next one from happening.