Read about this on another forum. Apparently the ambulance was stopped with the vehicle sitting on the tracks. How tragic for the community, first responders and train crew.
Wow, I would like to know the whole story, once the investigation is done, so I know why they were hit, also this is kind of scary because I am a member of a volunteer FD and we have some of the nicest payed paramedics around. I would hate to see anything like this happen plus we just got a new ambulance.
The danger zone of the railroad is pretty well defined. If you are on the rails you are in danger of death or severe injury. If it is within the ballasted area, remove yourself immediately. Anywhere within the right of way fences requires extreme caution, every time.
I was once running a train on the line between Northport, NE and Guernsey, WY when I noticed a lot of flashing red and white lights at a small town ahead. I could only see these for a moment through the trees while rounding a corner a few miles east of town. So being the cautious type I am, I slowed down. Sure enough, I came around a corner out of the trees and there were several fire departments fighting a fire near the tracks, equipment parked on the row, hoses stretched across the mainline and a nice shiney police car on the first road crossing with an officer holding a flash light and holding his hand up. No one had thought to call the railroad dispatcher’s office. I was able to stop in time but if I had not taken action when I first saw the lights against the sky I would have plowed through the police car, all the hoses and perhaps a fire truck or two as well. My first question to the cop was who was protecting the crossing at the other end of town since it was not similarly occupied by another officer. I reminded him trains run in both directions. He paled and then I proceeded to read him the riot act. Not quiet, not kind but full bore about how the actions of the emergency personnel had placed all their lives in jeopardy. Of course I had to file a report with the Supt’s office concerning the matter and over the course of the next week a trainmaster, special agent and claims agent made a visit to every police department and volunteer fire department along the line to establish proceedures for future actions.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER stop a car on a grade crossing for ANY reason. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER! Tell your kids that from the time they can talk until the time the have their driver’s license. Tell their fr
Do I ever agree! I have seen multiple times cops come close to getting nailed by a train.
(What follows should not be considered an insult to the police officers on this forum, I’m just stating what I saw.)
Once, a guess, a cop was looking at a box on the tracks about 200 feet from one of my railfanning spots. Great, I thought, police are making sure the railroads are safer from terrorist attacks. Well, that was fine and dandy, but a train was going by, I didn’t expect him to stand on track 2 as a train was going by on track 1. Then in the distance I hear another train. Oh dear! This was luckily coming down track 3, so if the cop didn’t quickly leave, he would be (“safely” traped on track 2 between track 1 and 3. Then I glanced at the signals…
TRACK 2 LEFT DARK AND NOW IS SHOWING GREEN! "
With only about half a minute before track 2 and 3 are occupied by trains, the cop runs off the tracks with the box, tosses in in a ditch, and responds to another call.
I was never so scared in my life. And I wasn’t the one in danger.
Also, a saw a cop pull over a person with the rear end of his squad car sitting on the crossing. Oh. no! Thankfully, a train wasn’t coming soon, but a second after he pulled away…
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
…sigh… At least they were doing good.
History repeats itself.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=31324
I think sometimes even police,firefighters and yes even parmedics need to get retrained when around railroad tracks. One thing I do remember when I was younger I lived by RR tracks in fact the Fromer CNW tracks now the UP but anyway every summer kids would go across the tracks and start fires and every time the Milw Fire Dept would respond with an engine and a truck company but before they would get there they would make sure no trains where coming which would mean they call in to there dispatcher and then there dispatcher would call the railroad and they change track signals from green to red and hold all trains until the hoses were off the tracks and the guys were clear of the tracks [banghead][banghead]
This being my very first post after some weeks of reading on this forum, I will try to make it a good one.
I have 20+ years on the local VFD, and 42 years of living within 2 miles of the CSXT (ex-Conrail, ex-Penn-Central, ex-NYC) Big 4 east of Terre Haute, IN. We used to have fires up there all the time, though that has slacked off since CSXT took over. New CSXT policy, no more tossing fusees into the woods, perhaps? Anyway, always, the first thing we did upon getting a call of a woods fire next to the ROW was to have central dispatch TX the RR (whoever was in charge at the time) and have them slow order all trains to 10 MPH. If this didn’t work (and sometimes they’d ignore us and blow through there at 60+MPH), we’d have dispatch call again and tell them to hold ALL trains, because there are hoses across the tracks. No, they won’t stop a train, but once the call was made, we would have NO trains until we had the dispatcher tell them we were done and they could resume operations. We’d usually get calls from the dispatcher about every 5 minutes, saying that the RR was on the phone asking if we were finished so they could run the trains.
The gist of this is that at least some of us in the VFD/emergency resp