SCOTT ISKOWITZ/ Tribune photo

Map | WFLA Video | Special Report: No-Win Situation For Trains

By RAY REYES and JAN HOLLINGSWORTH
The Tampa Tribune

By JAN HOLLINGSWORTH, GEORGE H. NEWMAN and RAY REYES

The Tampa Tribune

 

PLANT CITY Eduardo Whaite’s hopes of visiting family in Tampa turned into a fear he would never see them again when the train he boarded Tuesday morning in Miami was rocked by a tremendous impact, then veered off the tracks beside U.S. 92.

Amid the screams of passengers, the overpowering smell of leaking diesel fuel and the struggle to find a way out through the blinding smoke, there was but one consideration:

“I thought I was going to die,” the 16-year-old Venezuelan student said.

Whaite was riding in the rear-most car of a westbound Amtrak Silver Star when the train hit a Mack truck about 3:15 p.m., just east of Park Road.

It was the second fatal vehicle/train collision near the Polk/Hillsborough county line in less than 24 hours and the third major crash in the area in 45 days, Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Trooper Larry Coggins said.

“In every situation, it was a vehicle crossing an oncoming train,” Coggins said.

Monday, the eastbound Silver Star hit a car at a Lakeland crossing, killing all four occupants.

In June, a Lakeland teen was killed at another crossing there when she drove around safety gates and was struck by a westbound Amtrak train.

Thirty-four-year-old truck driver Michael Hill, of Plant City, was killed in Tuesday’s train wreck.

Employees at Fishel Co., housed in the Plant City Steel/Rinker building just east of Park Road, have grown accustomed to the trains that zip by throughout the day at speeds up to 79 miles per hour.

But when they heard the frantic shrieks of a train whistle followed by a deafening crash, they came running.

Fishel area manager Charles Bass got to the parking lot in time to see an Amtrak train, brakes screeching, as it wobbled on the track before it derailed. Behind the train, a black plume of smoke rocketed skyward.

Bass ran inside to call 911, then ran to the stalled train. The shaken engineer, a woman in a crisp white shirt, was climbing from the engine.

“I could see she’d hit the windshield,” he said, noting spots of blood on the glass. “She said, ‘”I’m OK. Please go check on the other folks,’” he said.

The remains of a commercial flatbed truck were strewn behind the 11-car passenger train for about 200 feet.

“It was totally disintegrated,” Plant City Fire Operations Chief Eugene Shuler said. Firefighters quickly extinguished flames from the crash.

Hill died on impact. Authorities said he was pulling out of a private drive at Universal Structures, 2291 U.S. 92 E., when the train crashed into him. He was hauling an industrial trash bin and building materials.

The crossing is marked with standard warning signs, but has no electronic gates or arms, Amtrak officials said.

At least 15 of the 133 passengers and 11 crew members aboard the Silver Star, including the engineer, were transported to area hospitals with minor injuries. The wreckage is expected to be cleared and tracks repaired and reopened in 24 to 48 hours, an official said shortly after the crash. Amtrak planned to use buses and other trains to get the uninjured passengers to their destinations.

No one aboard Monday’s Silver Star was injured when the eastbound train hit a car on the tracks in Lakeland, killing all four occupants at 3:20 p.m.

That train was still on its way to New York as Tuesday’s Silver Star derailed in Plant City, 23 hours and 55 minutes later.

“It was terrifying. We heard the brakes and knew something was wrong,” said Analiese Barnes, 19, a Florida State University student.

Barnes said when she saw smoke, she feared the train was going to catch on fire.

Ricardo Rodriguez, 20, was sitting in the second to the last car when the train suddenly jerked and lurched.

“We were moving pretty fast when they hit the brakes,” Rodriguez said. “You could feel the train cars compressing into one another. It was as if we were sliding in the sand.”

Whaite had wanted to pay his brother and father a surprise visit in Tampa. As the train sped into Plant City, he called his brother to reveal the surprise.

“Bro, I’ll be at the station in 20 minutes,” he told him.

Moments later, Whaite placed another call – this one from the Family Bowl, where authorities evacuated passengers.

“Bro,” he said, “the train crashed.”

Inside the air-conditioned bowling alley, about 100 train passengers gathered for food and drink and tried to quiet jangled nerves.

Nilda Fortuna and Zaira Rodriguez sat together facing lane No. 6, talking about the wreck.

“I still haven’t calmed down,” Fortuna said. “I take blood pressure medicine. I knew my heart was racing.”

Paramedics on the scene took blood pressure readings for anyone who wanted it tested.

Billy Phillips, a truck driver who was among the Fishel employees who poured out of the Plant City Steel building when they heard the impact, said the wrecks are coming too close and too often.

“They’re gonna have to slow it down,” he said. “Trains can be fixed. But what that train done can’t ever be repaired.”

Reporter Dave Nicholson and researchers Mike Messano and Buddy Jaudon contributed to this story. Jan Hollingsworth, George H. Newman and Ray Reyes can be reached at (813) 865-4430.

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