NTSB begins investigation into Joplin derailment

A National Transportation Safety Board team completed Monday its first full day of investigation into the Amtrak derailment near Joplin last week that took three lives and held a brief press conference on the project so far Monday afternoon.

The Empire Builder derailment occurred just west of Joplin about 4 p.m. Saturday, hospitalizing several people and injuring dozens of others on top of the three that were killed.

Liberty County Coroner's Office has released the names of the fatalities, husband and wife Donald Varnadoe, 74, and Marjorie Varnedoe, 72, of Georgia and Zachariah Schneider, 29, of Illinois.

Amtrak reported the westbound train, with two engines and 10 cars, was carrying 141 people and had 16 Amtrak employees on board.

All passengers have been accounted for and only some remain hospitalized, all of them in stable condition.

Five people were reported hospitalized in stable condition Sunday.

NTSB Vice-Chairman Bruce Landsberg said in Monday's press conference that he offers his condolences on behalf of his organization to the families who've lost loved ones and those still suffering from their injuries.

He also extended his thanks and praise to the work of the local first responders who came to help, 98 percent of whom were volunteers, and to the community at large which provided assistance in the immediate wake of the derailment.

NTSB's role in the aftermath of the derailment is to investigate the crash, find out exactly what happened and why, and eventually provide recommendations on how to avoid such events in the future.

Landsberg said the 14-person NTSB team, consisting of experts from various related disciplines, will be onsite for around a week, documenting the scene before releasing a preliminary report within 30 days. He said personnel from the Vople National Transpiration System Center will also be helping them.

He said more conclusive reports will follow as analysis progresses and a probable cause is found.

He said the investigations will also include interviews with Amtrak crews, rail inspectors and other relevant parties including Amtrak, BNSF, the Federal Railway Administration and several unions like the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainsmen.

He said these crashes happen over the course of seconds and the team is examining footage from the forward facing cameras on the derailed train as well as the BNSF train that preceded it by about 80 minutes.

"We have experts that are studying that camera footage frame by frame to make sure that we see exactly what the engineer saw, or maybe didn't see," he said.

Lansberg said he is sensitive to the fact that this railway is vital to the community and local economy and once everything had been properly documented the incident's lead investigator Jim Southworth will release it to BNSF.

While it's only been one full day, he said, they've already released the locomotive and some of the rail cars for removal, so progress is being made.

The facts so far

While the team has only been on site for one full day, Landsberg said, they have made progress finding out what happened, though it will be some time before a probable cause is found.

He said the team has examined the train's black box and has determined it was going between 75 and 78 miles per hour, just under the speed limit of 79 on the area of track where the derailment occurred on a gradual right-hand curve just prior to a switch.

Landsberg said two areas of interest in their investigation are the possibility of passengers being ejected from the train during the crash, and whether that area of track has had issues in the past relevant to this derailment.

He said he's been advised by BNSF that the last inspection of this area of track was preformed Sept. 23 and they typically inspect it twice a week.

As for the possibility of passenger ejections, he said they won't have a conclusive answer for a few months, after throughly examining the scene and the injuries of passengers.

Despite this information, Landsberg said, there remains much ground to cover and the "whys" of this case will not be known for some time yet.

"We're not ruling anything out at this point," he said.