Horrifying Runaway Train: San Bernardino train disaster SP 7551 East | Mayday | Wonder

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] a freight train is out of control get on the phone tell them we got a runaway train 7551 to west colton its brakes can't hold it as it rockets down a mountain mayday mayday we're doing 90 miles an hour 9-0 now thousands of tons of steel and freight are heading straight for a small town we're gonna die on that curb an innocent mistake risks the lives of everyone on board and many more in the town below [Music] we are in an emergency [Music] [Music] san bernardino california a quiet suburban town at the foot of the san gabriel mountains [Music] it's a great place to raise a family in between the emptiness of the mojave desert and the bustle of los angeles when we had problems in the neighborhood we could go to one another and it was a very nice neighborhood but in 1989 san bernardino is rocked by two disasters six people are killed 18 houses are completely destroyed it begins with an out of control train sixty seventy eighty and ends with a raging fire you could see a huge cloud of black smoke in the air the scene looked like dante's inferno the disasters appear linked but they happen more than a week apart investigators comb through the wreckage to find the hidden connection somebody help me they uncover a series of shocking decisions which have deadly consequences for some and scar a town forever early morning may the 12th 1989. on a railroad siding in the desert a freight train waits to head up over california's san gabriel mountains frank holland is the chief engineer for southern pacific freight train number 7551 east well my job as an engineer is to get on the train operate the locomotives um obey the rules speeds slow down at restrictions and get the train from point a to point b his work on this trip actually began the night before at the mohave rail railyard some of southern pacific's freight trains are put together here picking up crews and engines to take them across the country holland is here to collect the paperwork he'll need for the journey hey frank holland was promoted to chief engineer three years before okay clearance form drain orders train less stand tonnage profile his paperwork tells him he's hauling 69 freight cars each one weighing 54 431 kilos holland also learns that the cars are all filled with the same thing trona it's a non-toxic chemical used in fertilizer so you start making your calculations on what kind of horsepower you're gonna have to have to take that train down that hill and that will tell you at what speed you can go thanks have a good one all together holland's paperwork tells him he's hauling more than three and a half million kilos of cargo more than ten jumbo jets the cargo's final destination is south america today holland's only taking it as far as the west colton terminal near los angeles to do that he'll have to haul the cargo up the san gabriel mountains and through the cajon pass then he'll carefully slow his huge train as it winds down the mountain hey guys we're going down to west col we've got 69 cars filled with toronto everett crown is the conductor of seven five five one he'll sit up in the front engine to assist holland allen reese is the brake man this morning he'll ride two engines back between them the three men have almost 50 years of experience working the trains with southern pacific to make sure he has enough power to move his train up and down the mountain holland has asked for a little assistance [Music] southern pacific dispatchers send him two helper engines lawrence hill is the engineer at the back robert waterbury is his break man while they've run this route before it's not where they normally work they don't know the weight of the cargo they're helping to haul and they don't ask 7551 east now has four engines up front and two behind with the last two in place the train is all set to go helper calling head end head end coupled and ready to go roger that so 7551 east slowly gathers steam in just an hour and a half it'll reach the top of the mountains the 1300 meter high cajon pass [Music] helper to head in headed we've cleared the siding thank you [Music] on the other side of the mountains the town of san bernardino is slowly coming to life [Music] the muskoy section is a fairly new development on the northwestern edge of the town it's filled with single-story homes and growing families christopher shaw is waking up at 2326 duffy street it's his mother's house but after a fight with his girlfriend he'd spent the night [Music] across the street ruth green has succeeded in getting three children out of bed and off to school her only daughter lavonne is staying home it's just my daughter and i and we're just making ready for what we considered a normal morning we had had our breakfast and was straightening up in the kitchen one of the only things people don't like about this part of san bernardino is the train tracks trains race by on top of a six meter high levee some of the houses on duffy street back right up to the tracks when the homes went up for sale the realtor was showing my husband a home that was on the same side of the street as the tracks the tracks would have been behind our home and he said no he didn't want that [Music] just after 7am 7551 east reaches the highest point of its trip the cajon pass it's all downhill from here the pass is a vital rail link between los angeles and the rest of the world it's one of only three ways to get through the mountains dozens of trains rumble through here every day traditionally in railroading mountain railroaders are respected as the big guys the tough guys because they have the most demanding job cajon pass is one of the toughest mountain passes for railroaders to deal with in the entire united states so many trains go over it and it is extremely demanding that everyone has to be on their toes one hundred percent all the time no chance no no engineer frank holland and conductor everett crown have the train right on time there hasn't been any communication between the men at the front and the two men at the back of the train since the trip began there's been no need everything's running smoothly now comes the most critical part of the journey slowing the massive train as it starts down the mountain what we do when we run a train from the mojave area to colton is basically we drive it off a cliff at that point the track tips over and goes downhill at a very steep grade 2.2 percent and for trains 2.2 feet down in every 100 feet is like falling off a cliff as 7551 east begins heading downhill the crews still believe it's a normal run what they don't know is that their train is already out of control and they have no way to slow it down [Music] may the 12th 1989 just after seven in the morning southern pacific freight train 7551 east begins the long slow descent from the top of the san gabriel mountains the massive train is hauling 69 cars full of freight at the bottom of the hill the sleepy town of san bernardino california as the tracks start dipping downhill engineer frank holland first applies his dynamic brakes they slow each of the six engines reducing the speed of the entire train he's only allowed to go 48 kilometers an hour through the pass he checks in with lawrence hill the engineer and the helper engine at the back of the train to make sure he can maintain his speed calling the helper this is the helper you got all your dynamics yeah i'm in full roger that the first part of the downhill run twists back and forth 56 times the friction from the turns helps slow the mammoth train even with the turns holland starts applying his air brakes they put pressure on the wheels of each freight car the train is now traveling at 40 kilometers an hour that's exactly where holland wants it to stay [Music] once through the curves though holland's breakman everett crown notices that the train is picking up speed frank we're at 30. should be at 25. the the train actually was maintaining its speed it might have been picking up just a little bit but we still had a long way to go it's creeping confused holland continues to increase the pressure on the air brakes but the train just keeps going faster by the time it reached 40 miles an hour i was very concerned the the train was speeding as the train approaches 72 kilometers an hour holland turns his air brakes on full but it doesn't help at the bottom of the hill the track bends around the town of san bernardino frank holland knows he's not supposed to go more than 64 kilometers an hour around the corner part way down the hill he's already going much faster than that ruth green's husband has left for work her three youngest children are off to school across the street chris shaw is just about to take a shower engineer frank holland knows there are several houses that are right in the way if his train comes off the track i've been over that territory many times and yeah i knew that there was a curb coming down there that we weren't gonna make at the back of the train engineer lawrence hill also knows they're in trouble the air brakes are turned on full but the train isn't slowing down at all something must be wrong up there without talking to the front of the train hill slams on the train's emergency brakes it's their last chance the drain at that point tried to slow down a little bit a couple seconds later it was off to the races it just took off like a rocket the speed was going up so fast i uh i couldn't even believe it the emergency brakes haven't worked smoke begins pouring out from underneath the train and it just keeps going faster 60. 70 80. it stopped at 90 because that's as far as the speedometer would go but holland knows 7551 east is still picking up speed i'm thinking my god i'm fired actually that's what i thought i'm just looking at everything that i've done i'm trying to go back and see where i had made a mistake what had happened 7551 to west colton 7551 to west colton we're trying to get a hold of the train dispatcher and he won't answer the train is out of control and they can't tell anyone about it at that point we're just kind of out there by ourselves try that phone again 7551 to west colton go ahead we have a slight problem at the back of the train engineer lawrence hill listens to the radio call i don't know if we can get this train stop he breaks in desperate to tell the dispatcher how dangerous the situation is mayday mating we're doing 90 miles an hour 9-0 out of control won't be able to stop till we hit colton but there's nothing the dispatcher can do the train is traveling at more than 160 kilometers an hour the houses of san bernardino are just seconds away down in the town a strange rumbling breaks the morning calm my house began to vibrate the house was rattling so hard i would have thought that the windows would have broke it just got worse and worse by then i realized it was the train as we were coming up to that curve i looked over at everett and i said we're gonna die on that curb he um wild eyed like he was just couldn't believe and just scared to death i'm sure i look the same way all i knew is that i just put my feet up there and i said hang on here we go i never expected to survive ah wes colton a gym saugus dispatcher please come in we are on the ground here between dyke and stover mayday mayday in the helper engine at the back of the train engineer lawrence hill desperately calls the southern pacific dispatcher being at the end of the train has saved him from injury but he's not sure everyone else has been so lucky it takes more than a minute for hill to get a response to his frantic call sagas dispatcher 7551 east over saugus dispatcher we are all over the ground here i haven't heard anything from the head end they may need some assistance we went on the ground incredibly engineer frank holland survives the wreck the man in charge of the train crawls away from his ruined engine the first of the cars to derail everett where's over we got to get him he's still inside let's get you down first he's helped out of the train by eyewitnesses to the disaster and they pulled me off of the locomotive and set me down it was just i just couldn't believe it the cars were just mangled the locomotives were destroyed it was just you know unbelievable devastation i looked back at that and i went oh my god what did i do frank holland has broken several ribs one of his lungs is punctured the man who was riding with him everett crown is soon found dead as is alan reese the brake man who was riding in the third engine footage taken shortly after the crash shows the scale of the disaster seven houses have been destroyed the train itself is a write-off as the dust cleared then you could see some of the cars had you know toppled over you could see that it looked like you know some houses were gone you could see just a twisted jumbled mass of a metal these cars are turned over you're really trying to grapple with what is this what's happened [Applause] [Music] alan simpson is a battalion chief with the san bernardino fire department the house that we focused on with the information that the mother gave us about one individual was totally obliterated you wouldn't recognize it as a house it looked like a jumble of somebody gone through it with a bulldozer they were hollering that there's somebody still in there we later learned that that was where chris shaw lived and when you looked at that house it was like you'd say there was no way anybody could still be alive under all of that rubble and wreckage the wreckage is also hiding an explosive problem no one in the neighborhood knew about running alongside the railway about two meters below the ground is a pipeline carrying fuel back up the mountain if it's been damaged in the derailment a single spark could cause a major explosion prior to this incident we were not aware that this pipeline existed and ran directly behind our homes the thought's always in the back of your mind if you have something like that this is major 14 inch pipe full of pressurized fuel we know what that's going to do if it ruptures the pipeline is operated by the kalnev pipeline company it pulls hundreds of barrels of fuel from the pipe trying to reduce the size of any potential explosion but much more fuel remains behind automatic safety valves in the pipeline that are supposed to shut off individual sections aren't working the company can't completely drain the area under the derailment almost three hours after the crash rescue workers find the body of a small child he's the second young boy killed in the disaster well after we recovered the two children from the one house there wasn't a lot of hope for finding anybody else at that point but you never give up hope you always keep trying but there's pressure to wind the search down every moment spent looking for chris shaw further delays the cleanup and calnev can't check the pipeline properly until the rail cars are gone an entire neighborhood holds its breath is there any chance shaw could possibly have lived through the disaster southern pacific train 7551 east has crashed into san bernardino california four people are dead and an entire neighborhood has been evacuated a gas pipeline under the wreck hasn't been checked yet [Music] chris shaw was in one of the houses destroyed when the train derailed 12 hours later he's still missing george avery a firefighter for less than a year takes his shift at the crash site we were ordered to relieve the crews that were trying to search for a body and at that time they thought it was a body recovery shaw is the last person in the neighborhood still to be accounted for workers ask his mother to draw a map of the house she tells them her son was in the bathroom when the train derailed workers concentrate their final search effort there there's pieces of the house itself sticking out of this big potash mound so you have studs and rafters and roof covering so they gave me a specific area so i started removing the product and as i did so for it seemed like an eternity but it was probably an hour hour and a half this void occurred and started to reveal itself in front of me as avery reaches into the opening he feels something snag his jacket so then i immediately pulled it out thinking it was caught on a nail or whatever as i pulled it out and looked inside i saw this hand waving in front i found him i found him somebody help me it takes workers nearly an hour and a half to pull chris from the wreckage debris from the train had formed a protective cocoon around him it gave shore air to breathe and kept the jagged metal from crushing him we were absolutely amazed that he lived especially that long we're talking about most of the day really didn't think he had much of a chance so when he came up out of there it was just stunning with shaw's rescue everyone in the neighborhood and on the train has been found the wreck of 7551 east has killed four people injured four more and totally destroyed seven houses [Music] even with shaw's rescue san bernardino's troubles aren't over yet if the kal-nev pipeline has been damaged it could explode at any time destroying more homes and taking more lives [Music] with that threat hanging over the neighborhood the search for the cause of the derailment begins william pugh and russell quimby are with the national transportation safety board by the time the team got there it was fairly late it was dark and the scene looked like dante's inferno a lot of wreckage a lot of parts still particularly the brake parts wheels red-hot still after 12 hours wheels had gotten so hot they literally expanded off the axles the friction between the wheels the brakes and the tracks was so intense that the wheels themselves began to liquefy turning to molten steel as the train sped down the hill investigators know the trains brakes couldn't slow it down but why the next day clean up operations begin southern pacific needs to clear its ruined train from the area it's the only way investigators can work and kal-nev can check its pipeline southern pacific has all of the cars moved two days later but the ground is still covered with 7551 east's cargo hundreds of tons of tronar kalnev begins clearing the trona along the root of the pipeline it's the quickest way to inspect the line and it keeps the heavy equipment away they made five or six excavations down to the pipeline to visually look at the pipeline they felt comfortable that nothing had penetrated to the depth of the pipeline the fuel is under incredible pressure any damage could lead to a massive leak and possible explosion but kalmer finds nothing the depth of the pipe has shielded it from the storm above the pipeline is a vital source of gas for las vegas almost 320 kilometers away it supplies both civilian and military customers in the desert there's pressure to get the gas moving again there were a number of people in the community that thought it should not be open and supposedly people in las vegas had said that they had cars that were worth more than our homes on duffy street and so fire up the pipeline [Music] just four days after the derailment the pipeline is restarted khalnev watches for any drop in pressure it would mean fuel was escaping that there was a leak somewhere in the system but it holds the very same day southern pacific finishes its repairs on the damaged railway trains are once again moving past san bernardino the cleanup isn't quite finished though more of the ash-like cargo of train 7551 east is littered across the area heavy machinery comes in to dig it up and haul it away the huge machines could easily damage the pipeline so it's carefully marked with stakes i told my husband one evening that i smelt gas but we had been reassured that they had inspected this line and that there were no leaks i was at the accident site until it was finally cleaned up and there was a fence put around the area and secured and it looked like everything was fine [Music] early morning may the 25th it's been almost two weeks since 7551 east derailed slamming into san bernardino but the cleanup was fast for more than a week the trains and the fuel in a pipeline below have been running smoothly then from a clear sky rain seems to fall large sections of the neighborhood are soaked by this peculiar shower ruth green is back in her house when for the second time in a month she's confronted with a horrifying sight to the left of me as far as i could see up down or side to side was nothing but a big wall of fire i got to the front door neighbors were screaming get out get out i ran for my life once again the fire department responds to a major disaster on duffy street as we're getting the call and getting on the rig and opening the door there was no doubt in my mind what that was you could see a huge column of smoke and flame and i knew immediately it had to be the pipeline a tower of smoke and flame reaches more than 100 meters into the sky initially when we got in there we were so close that the plastic lenses on the front of the engine melted several the turn signals uh part of the red lights melted there is a intense noise coming from this pipeline where it ruptured it sounded like a jet engine deafening is how i would describe it and we dealt with that all day long local firefighters aren't the only ones called back to the scene i got a call report to the chairman's office i went down to chairman's office notified that the pipeline blew up and i should get my team together again the area looked more or less like a war zone where a lot of damage a lot of fire damage had been done houses in the area were incinerated once again kalnev which runs the pipeline can't shut its emergency valves almost two million liters of fuel burn for more than seven hours by the time the flames are out two people are dead three more are injured another 11 houses have been destroyed [Music] the residents of san bernardino are in shock they talked about the fact that one of the people that died that all they really could find was their shoes that were left in one spot and that you know the mental picture of that it troubles you quite a bit after the fire it was over for me i just i couldn't see myself living in the house anymore it really scared me just that bad what people here will soon learn is that all of the damage pain and suffering is the result of a simple horrifying mistake [Music] a small neighborhood in san bernardino california has been devastated by two disasters in just 13 days a train derailment and a gas explosion have ripped through the area killing six people investigators with the national transportation safety board study both accidents with the train crash they focus on black boxes which were recovered from three of the engines and that records uh distance speed uh throttle position air brake pressures uh that we tried to figure out what speed the train eventually got to it exceeded the graph the black box is revealed that 7551 east had probably reached the incredible speed of 177 kilometers per hour before derailing the speed limit on the curve was just over 60 kilometers an hour although the train's brakes had been applied it continued accelerating how had the train become so out of control almost all accidents are a chain of events that linked together caused the accident of course any one point if you'd broken that link you know the accident wouldn't occurred like other freight trains 7551 east has two different systems to slow it down dynamic brakes and air brakes air brakes push a block against the wheels of each freight car the greater the pressure applied to the block the slower the train goes investigators learned that the air brakes were working properly as the train started down the hill as the train sped up though engineer frank holland maintained pressure on the air brakes the heat created by the brakes became so intense that they melted by the time of the crash they were useless the team turns its focus to the dynamic brakes the dynamic brakes harness a magnetic field created by the engine's main generator they reverse the magnetic field which slows the axles on the locomotive [Music] there were four engines at the front of the train and two at the back before beginning his trip engineer frank holland knew that his second engine wasn't working at all and that the dynamic brakes on his fourth engine were only working sporadically still it was more than enough we figured that with the units that we had on the head in and the two helpers that they gave us later on we could do 30 miles an hour down that grade with no problem when his train starts down the mountain holland has it under control with the brakes he has he should be able to hold his speed but he can't frank we're at 30. it should be at 25. it's creeping what the ntsb investigators discover from the black boxes is stunning the brakes on the third engine at the front of the train didn't work at all as 7551 east gathered speed during the trip holland had even checked with the brakeman in the third engine allen yeah what are your dynamics like they're revving but the black boxes show investigators that even though the dynamic brakes were making the noise they usually make they weren't working they weren't helping slow the train down at all but it gets worse coupled and ready to go roger of the two engines added to the back of the train one didn't have any braking power either lawrence hill the engineer at the back knew it but he never told frank holland he didn't communicate to him that he had only one locomotive had a dynamic the other one was out the helper engineer thought that the dispatcher would notify the lead engineer calling the helper this is the helper you got all your dynamics yeah i'm in full so when holland asks hill at the back of the train if he has all of his dynamics hill says yes but he only means in the one engine it's a startling discovery holland doesn't have anywhere near the breaking power he thinks he does investigators studying the black boxes uncover one more secret of the train's terrifying ride down the mountain [Music] something must be wrong up there when lawrence hill pulled the emergency brakes he actually cancelled out the dynamic brakes it's a safety feature to keep the wheels from locking and the train from sliding down the tracks in this case with the air brakes melting the dynamic brakes were the only thing holding the train back putting the emergency brakes on actually sped the train up when the emergency brakes are applied what happens is you lose your dynamic braking and you've got a runaway train now but pew is still puzzled according to all the paperwork 7551 east was hauling three and a half million kilos of cargo at that weight even with his crippled engines pollen should have been able to hold his speed going down the mountain to find out why he couldn't investigators turned their attention to the days before the accident 7551 east was pulling a shipment for lake minerals five days before the trip began the company's superintendent drops off the proper paperwork with thomas blair who works for southern pacific the paperwork outlines what's in the shipment and normally how much it weighs thanks in this case though the weight was not filled in lake minerals believed each of the cars was filled to its maximum 90 000 kilos hey hey since that's what the company expected lake minerals didn't think there was any reason to put the number down but blair knows that to fill out the proper computer forms he'll need to have a weight or the train won't be able to leave the train yard blair has been working with southern pacific for 17 years he's seen thousands of freight cars leave his yard he makes an educated guess that the material in each car on the train weighs 54 000 kilos but blair's guess is a tragic miscalculation every single freight car on 7551 east is actually carrying 36 000 kilos more material than he estimated across 69 cars it means that the train is actually more than six jumbo jets two and a half million kilos heavier than anyone thinks it is nobody caught the fact that the weights were way under train orders train less stand tonnage profile from then on uh the engineer had a profile to train it showed 6 100 tons can i'll be back he operated that way and it was wrong it was dramatically wrong i mean that was only two-thirds of the way to that train that train was doomed and we just didn't know it frank holland was in trouble before his trip began even if all of his engines were working it would have been a difficult trip down the mountain with all the problems he had he simply didn't have the power to slow his enormous train down crashing into san bernardino was all but inevitable from the beginning the wreck of 7551 east was a preventable disaster investigators are about to discover that the explosion which followed didn't have to happen either in may of 1989 twin disasters shatter the town of san bernardino california a train derailment and a gas line explosion kills six people and destroy more than a dozen houses investigators comb through the ashes to learn how the two events are linked the pipeline was two meters below ground and in the days after the derailment kal-nev examined it closely they couldn't find a single dent or crack where the train had broken through the earth the train crash hadn't seemed to weaken the pipeline and when gas began pumping through the pipe there was no loss of pressure no warning sign of a problem they started operating and brought it up to about 1600 pounds and all of the pressure readings at various places along the pipeline look normal since the derailment itself didn't cause the rupture investigators continue their search they study the pipeline for clues even though the fire burned for hours the piece of pipe that burst has not been destroyed when the pipe opened up it caused a rupture in the pipe that was sort of what we term as a fish mouth shape and at the widest area it was about four inches wide and it was about two and a half feet long [Music] like forensic investigators the ntsb looks for a telltale fingerprint that will help them discover how the pipe broke near the spot where the pipe ruptured investigators find dents and several deeper gouges the marks are like wounds on a murder victim if investigators can find out what caused the marks they'll discover what caused the pipeline to burst we knew that there were deposits of hardened steel left in the gouges we knew that whatever piece of equipment had damaged the pipe had teeth on it that were hardened steel there are several possible suspects a number of front end loaders and one large backhoe used during the cleanup all had hardened steel teeth but batten can never pinpoint the blame well the ntsb determined that the damage to the pipeline was done during one of two phases either the cleanup of the train wreckage or it was done during the time in which the trona was being cleaned up after the train wreckage had been removed [Music] two mistakes resulted in a pair of disasters for san bernardino [Music] and the death of six people in its final report on the disasters the ntsb doesn't blame frank holland saying his belief that he had enough breaking power to stop the train was perfectly reasonable holland still rides the rails but he's never made the trip down the san gabriel mountains again [Music] psychologically i just don't think i could take it i don't think i could relive that every time i went down i would relive it and i choose not to do that it'd just be too painful calnev the company that operated the pipeline was called to account for not checking it after the cleanup operations were completed lawsuits against the company were settled out of court kelniev in hindsight i think would agree that they should have been much more thorough in their inspection they got comfortable with what they saw and they made an assessment without adequate information that it was an undamaged pipeline and okay to operate thomas blair who incorrectly filled in the paperwork was never charged but after the disaster southern pacific changed its rules so that every freight car without a specified weight was assumed to be carrying its maximum allowable load [Music] southern pacific also settled a number of lawsuits out of court the company no longer exists it was bought out years after the disaster [Music] trains continued to run past san bernardino but many of the families involved in the disaster moved away trains were still coming down out of cajon pass and so a person couldn't help but go in their mind go to where what if that this thing could happen again [Music] houses aren't allowed beside the tracks anymore [Music] all that's left is an ugly scar of land [Music] there's no monument here to mourn those who died or to mark the day when disaster came to duffy street [Music] you

Channel: Wonder

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Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, i shouldn't be alive, wonder i shouldn't be alive, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, mayday air crash investigation, mayday air disaster, air crash investigation, air crash investigation full episodes, air crash documentary, san bernardino, san bernardino train disaster, san bernardino train disaster documentary, san bernardino train wreck of 1989, san bernardino train wreck, sp 7551 east, train crash

Id: 0NS84qoYV_Y

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021