Metrolink 111: Looking Hell In The Eyes The L.A. Times article two days ago stating that metrolink Engineer Robert Sanchez had been text messaging seconds before the two trains crashed took my breath away. In an essay I wrote last week I said that the text messaging was not a disputable fact, that we knew he had been doing this. What surprises me is my own violent reaction to the revelation, which really isn’t one. Has this one crash between two trains sparked such a hellish debate among railroad fans and people who take trains and others who are involved with the event? Or am I the only one devastated by this event because of what? A picture I made up of the engineer driving the train? Well not a picture I made up really, but one presented in the media, at least the picture I’ve seen. The haunted individual, the consummate professional, the cheerful, guarded, private positive man who loved dogs and trains and lost a domestic partner to suicide? All of these present a poignant portrait of a man in a cab behind his own fences, conducting his job with professionalism and, yes, acting in an adolescent manner. Let me qualify these statements by saying that as one who has had experience with being written about in the media, I know that literary license, sensationalism, and organization of the facts in some kind of logical manner does not always present a true and accurate picture of someone’s life or motives. Therefore it has to be stated with caution that the real person is only known by a few and then sometimes they don’t always get it right. The only one who truly knew him was him, and so I will leave him in peace, and come to his defense on the simple understanding that he was human and deserves courtesy, respect and dignity even in these hard, trying and grueling moments after the accident. Here are some questions for consideration. Have we gotten so attached to our cell phones and electronic gadgets that we cannot put them down for one minute to complete some task like looking at a screen to see if there are any upcoming signals for trains to follow? The man who drove for Amtrak perhaps ten years ago did not have this trouble, I suppose. Cell phones were around but text messaging was not so predominant as it is now. The real question though isn’t about the cell phones because we’ve all been outraged with someone using a cell phone at the wrong time. Maybe it’s more about the power of distraction and then maybe it’s all about the power of responsibility. And how many times will my cats ignore the questions. How could an engineer do this? Even be thinking of this? What was so important that it had to be done now on a sharp curve? And the other thing, why couldn’t we just stop the train, and let the freight pass? The freight engineer put on the breaks. The freight engineer lived. And the all important one? How does it feel to be hit by a freight train? Anyone reading this has to remember that I never met this man and so my sometimes brutally honest observations are only designed to express dismay and not to detract from his personal accomplishments. I admire someone who can spend their whole life doing something they love: driving trains, or whatever it is. It shows a dedication that I sometimes think I lack in my own life, though at age 42 I’m not so sure that I know what I want to do when I grow up. God knows I’ve had some amazing opportunities present themselves and some have worked out and some haven’t. But this is a distraction as well. Now, back to my reactions to the Metrolink 111 crash on September 12, 2008. At first as you may see from my other writings on this subject, I was devastated. I was sympathetic toward Robert Sanchez the Metrolink engineer. I still am. This one fact has not changed. What has changed over the past week are my emotions. I described my sarcastic thought in an essay called “The Freight Train from Nowhere” and you may have read it. For two days after I read the article in which the NTSB stated its very preliminary findings I raged about the whole idea of someone text messaging in a train cab. In my online reading of this matter, you can imagine that I found some very hard comments, some accusations, and some real antipathy. I won’t say mine was the only voice of reason despite my anger, but I will say I strongly maintain and did online that we still need to be careful not to assume that was the only cause of the accident. But to release such information to people who had lost so much seemed like a travesty of common decency. To think that a text message could create such havoc in the lives of people who were heading home to barbecue and sleep or do whatever life dictated they do seemed to emphasize the complete waste of this accident. Did it have to happen like that? My other thoughts included things such as: so if we’re talking to teenagers who is the adolescent here? Why would someone do this and not draw a boundary line and use the power on off button on the cell phone? We do still have power off and on buttons. Why can’t the adult show some restraint and say hey this is kind of important let me watch these signals and do my job that I’ve been doing for a long time. The vehemence of my own feelings surprised me more than the sentiments themselves. Perhaps the whole thing about the text messaging and cell phone use boils down to a matter of boundaries, but that’s another essay for a completely different time. And then the real question: do we know what the message was? Walking out of my office to go to lunch today I discovered that once again I was sympathetic toward the Metrolink engineer. I became frightened. A review of the schedule for the Metrolink 111 Ventura County Line suggests that it is an eight minute trip from Chatsworth to simi Valley. At 4:16 the train pulled out of the Chatsworth station and proceeded on its way. Five minutes from the arrival time to Simi Valley, the train slammed into the Union Pacific train. There is something poignant about not realizing this is your last eight minutes to live. Ordering a roast beef sandwich at Union Station to be picked up at Moor Park whenever that was to occur and then settling in to go to Burbank and Glendale, turn around and do it all again, hop in the car, get out the keys and call it a night seems to be the order of anyone’s day. But today, pulling out of the Chatsworth Station and acknowledging a flashing yellow light struck me in the very core of my own vulnerability. How many times had he done this very same thing? Who was to say it would all end differently. The review of this schedule struck me in this manner because I could imagine he was sure he would get home and do what he had always done. That night, on that track, it was not meant to be. Sitting up in that cab looking hell in the eyes, to see a train bearing down on him at 42 miles per hour is simply unimaginable and must have, if he saw it, produced the most exquisite combination of reactions that even I in my endless imaginings cannot imagine. And then there’s the question my friend asked me: Did he even see it? At this moment, I’m not angry at Robert Sanchez for text messaging. That does not mean that I think it was a wise move. Hardly. I do think however that my emotions and experiences with this are not at all over. I am sure I will be writing more on the subject soon. After the fervor of my anger died and the fear of living for my last eight minutes left me, I found myself once again being where I had started, feeling very, very sad for his family’s loss. The simple truth of this accident for me is that if I think of it in terms of more than one person it will simply become too overwhelming. Everyone deals with it in their own way, mine is to constantly wonder what that last moment was like and maybe how can we stop it from happening again. I might even find a new passion: trains. It may be unpopular to show sympathy for the Metrolink engineer and it may be unfair to concentrate solely on this individual when there are twenty-four other families who are going through their own struggles. But for me this is the very pulse of my interest, the common threads between us, the pets, the house, the long hard hours, the positive attitudes if only those things. I’m sure as time goes on there will be lots more steps to take in this discovery. And I’m sure I don’t know where this will all end. I’m sure the answer will surprise even me.
Copyright © 2008 Shelley J Alongi |