Original subtitles

A freight train is out of control.

- Get on the phone. Tell 'em we got a runaway train. - 7551 to [indistinct]!

Its brakes can't hold it as it rockets down a mountain.

Mayday! Mayday! We're doing 90 mph! 9-0!

Now thousands of tons of steel and freight are heading straight for a small town.

We're gonna die on that curve!

An innocent mistake risks the lives of everyone onboard,

and many more in the town below.

- 3,000? - We're not getting any oxygen!

We have the terrain alarm.

- Aero Peru 603... - We are in an emergency.

San Bernardino, California.

A quiet suburban town at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.

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 neighbourhood, we could go to one another.

And... it was a very nice neighbourhood.

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 happened more than a week apart.

Investigators comb through the wreckage to find the hidden connection.

Help! Somebody help me!

They uncover a series of shocking decisions,

which have deadly consequences for some,

and scar a town forever.

Early morning, May 12, 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.

My job as an engineer is to get on the train,

operate the locomotives,

um... obey the rules, speeds,

slow down and restrictions,

and get the train from point A to point B.

His work on this trip actually began the night before, at the Mojave Rail Yard.

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.

Hey.

Holland was promoted to chief engineer three years before.

Okay... clearance form,

train orders, train list and a 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 3.5 million kilos of cargo -

more than 10 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.

Okay, guys, we're going down to West Colton. We got 69 cars,

filled with... trona.

Everett Crown is the conductor of 7551.

He'll sit up in the front engine to assist Holland.

Allan Reiss is the brakeman 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.

Southern Pacific dispatchers send him two helper engines.

Lawrence Hill is the engineer at the back.

Robert Waterbury is his brakeman.

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.

7551 East slowly gathers steam.

In just an hour and a half, it'll reach the top of the mountains,

the 1,300-metre-high Cajon Pass.

Helper to head end.

- Head end. - We've cleared the siding.

Thank you.

On the other side of the mountains,

the town of San Bernardino is slowly coming to life.

The Muscoy section is a fairly new development

on the northwestern edge of the town.

It's filled with single-storey 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.

Across the street,

Ruth Green has succeeded in getting three children out of bed and off to school.

Her only daughter, Lavon, 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 were 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-metre-high levee.

Some of the houses on Duffy St. 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've been behind our home. And he said no, he didn't want that.

Just after 7:00 a.m.,

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 100% 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 Mohave 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%.

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.

May 12, 1989.

Just after 7:00 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 km/h through the pass.

He checks in with Lawrence Hill,

the engineer in 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 travelling at 40 km/h.

That's exactly where Holland wants it to stay.

Once through the curves, though, Holland's brakeman, Everett Crown,

notices that the train is picking up speed.

Frank, we're at 30.

Should be at 25.

The train, actually, was maintaining its speed.

It might've 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 mph...

...I was very concerned.

The train was speeding.

As the train approaches 72 km/h,

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 km/h around the corner.

Partway 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 curve coming down there and 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 train, at that point, tried to slow down a little bit.

A couple of seconds later, it was off to the races.

It just took off like a rocket.

The speed was going up so fast, 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.

Sixty!

Seventy!

Eighty!

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 were just kinda out there by ourselves.

Try that phone again!

7551 to West Colton!

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 stopped!

He breaks in, desperate to tell the dispatcher how dangerous the situation is.

Mayday! Mayday! We're doing 90 mph!

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 travelling more than 160 km/h.

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've thought that the windows would've 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 curve!

He, uh...

wild-eyed...

Like he was just... couldn't believe and just scared to death,

and I'm sure I looked the same way.

All I knew is that I just put my feet up there and said, "Hang on. Here we go.

I never expected to survive.

West Colton!

AGYM Saugus Dispatcher.

Please come in.

We're on the ground here between Dike 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.

SP 7551.

Anybody, please come in!

It takes more than a minute for Hill to get a response to his frantic call.

Saugus 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 Everett? We gotta get him. He's still inside.

Let's get you down first.

He's helped out of the train by eyewitnesses to the disaster.

When they pulled me off 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 just 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 Allan Reiss, the brakeman 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 some houses were... gone.

You could see just a twisted, jumbled...

mass of... of metal,

these cars are turned over.

You're really trying to grapple with: What is this? What's happened?

Allan Simpson is a battalion chief

with the San Bernardino Fire Department.

The house that we focused on,

with the information that, uh,

the mother gave us about one individual,

was totally obliterated.

You wouldn't have recognized it as a house.

It looked like a jumble somebody had gone through it with a bulldozer.

They were hollering that there's somebody still in there.

We later learned that was where Chris Shaw lived.

And when you looked at that house,

it was like you would 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 neighbourhood knew about.

Running alongside the railway, about two metres 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, a 14-inch pipe full of pressurized fuel.

We know what that's gonna do if it ruptures.

The pipeline is operated by the Calnev 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.

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 railcars are gone.

An entire neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood has been evacuated.

A gas pipeline under the wreck hasn't been checked yet.

Chris Shaw was in one of the houses destroyed when the train derailed.

Twelve 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 neighbourhood 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, 1.5 hours,

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!!

Help!

Somebody help me!

It takes workers nearly 1.5 hours to pull Chris Shaw from the wreckage.

Debris from the train had formed a protective cocoon around him.

It gave Shaw air to breathe and kept the jagged metal from crushing him.

We were absolutely amazed that he lived,

especially that long.

We're talking 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 neighbourhood and on the train has been found.

The wreck of 7551 East has killed four people,

injured four more and totally destroyed seven houses.

Even with Shaw's rescue, San Bernardino's troubles aren't over yet.

If the Calnev pipeline has been damaged, it could explode at any time,

destroying more homes and taking more lives.

With that threat hanging over the neighbourhood,

the search for the cause of the derailment begins.

William Pugh and Russel Quimby are with the National Transportation Safety Board.

By the time the team got there,

it was fairly late and 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.

The wheels had gotten so hot, they'd literally expanded off the axles.

The friction between the wheels, the brakes and the tracks was so intense,

the wheels themselves began to liquify,

turning to molten steel as the train sped down the hill.

Investigators know the train's brakes couldn't slow it down, but why?

The next day, cleanup operations begin.

Southern Pacific needs to clear its ruined train from the area.

It's the only way the investigators can work and Calnev 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 trona.

Calnev begins clearing the trona along the route 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 Calnev 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 km 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 opened.

And supposedly people in Las Vegas had said that they had cars

that were worth more than our homes on Duffy St. and so fire up the pipeline.

Just four days after the derailment,

the pipeline is restarted.

Calnev 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 smelled 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.

Early morning, May 25.

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 neighbourhood 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, neighbours were screaming, "Get out! Get out!"

I ran for my life.

Once again, the fire department responds to a major disaster on Duffy St.

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 metres 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 of the turn signals, part of the red lights melted.

There was an intense noise coming from this...

pipeline, where it had 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 to report to the chairman's office.

I went down to the chairman's office,

notified that the pipeline blew up,

and that 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.

Uh, houses in the area were, uh,

incinerated.

Once again, Calnev, which runs the pipeline,

can't shut its emergency valves.

Almost two-million litres 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.

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.

A small neighbourhood 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,

throttle position, air-brake pressures.

We try to figure out what speed the train eventually got to. It exceeded the graph.

The black boxes reveal that 7551 East

had probably reached the incredible speed

of 177 km/h before derailing.

The speed limit on the curve was just over 60 km/h.

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 link together to cause the accident.

Of course, any one point, if you'd broken that link,

you know, the accident wouldn't have 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 learn 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 engines' main generator.

They reverse the magnetic field, which slows the axles on the locomotive.

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 end,

and the two helpers that they gave us later on,

we could do 30 mph 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.

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.

- Allan? - 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 that. - 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 he had only one locomotive...

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 braking power he thinks he does.

Investigators studying the black boxes uncover one more secret

of the train's terrifying ride down the mountain.

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 get a runaway train.

But Pugh is still puzzled.

According to all the paperwork,

7551 East was hauling 3.5 million kilos of cargo.

At that weight, even with his crippled engines,

Holland should've been able to hold his speed going down the mountain.

To find out why he couldn't,

investigators turn 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 trainyard.

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 the train is actually more than six jumbo jets,

2.5 million kilos heavier than anyone thinks it is.

Nobody caught the fact that the weights were way under.

Train orders, train lists and tonnage profile.

From then on, uh...

the engineer had a profile of the train that showed 6,100 tons.

He operated that way,

and it was wrong, it was dramatically wrong.

I mean, that was only two-thirds the weight of 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've been a difficult trip down the mountain.

With all of 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

kill 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 metres below ground.

And in the days after the derailment, Calnev 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 1,600 pounds,

and all of the pressure readings at various places along the pipeline looked 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 about 2.5 feet long.

Like forensic investigators,

the NTSB looks for a tell-tale 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, uh,

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, uh, 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.

Two mistakes resulted in a pair of disasters for San Bernardino...

...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 braking 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.

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, uh, 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.

Calnev, 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.

Southern Pacific also settled a number of lawsuits out of court.

The company no longer exists.

It was bought out years after the disaster.

Trains continue to run past San Bernardino,

but many of the families involved in the disaster moved away.

Trains are 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.

Houses aren't allowed beside the tracks anymore.

All that's left is an ugly scar of land.

There is no monument here to mourn those who died.

Or to mark the day when disaster came to Duffy St.

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