Rash of Train-Track Deaths Stirs Plan for Safety Awareness Program

In the wake of the third fatal train accident in as many weeks, transportation officials Monday announced plans for a public-awareness campaign designed to remind San Diego County residents that, now more than ever, trains can kill.

The decision followed the deaths Sunday of two of five people who had been sitting on the track in Encinitas, bringing the total of people struck and killed by trains in the county during October to four.

Jesus Garcia, district director of Caltrans, said his agency will meet with city and county officials during the coming weeks to decide how best to update San Diegans’ often outdated perceptions of railroad hazards.

“Most people are aware that a freeway is not a safe place to play, but for some reason they don’t understand that train tracks, in many cases, are even more deadly,” Garcia said in a statement. “We need to make them aware. Their lives could depend on it.”

The agency’s goal: to erase romantic visions of hobo-hauling freight trains ambling leisurely--and noisily--down the track. According to Howard Robertson, an Amtrak spokesman, its trains--16 of which zip through San Diego County each day--are faster and quieter than ever. And, as they have gained speed and lost decibels, partly as a result of newly installed quarter-mile strips of smooth, silent track, they also have grown more deadly.

“It’s kind of a give and take,” Robertson said. “People like it (the improvements), but it’s creating a little bit more danger. . . . (The trains) are on you before you even know it.”

According to law-enforcement officials, that is apparently what happened to a group of at least five people Sunday evening. About 7 p.m., a southbound train appeared suddenly out of the darkness, moving at 87 m.p.h. along the section of track in Encinitas where the group had gathered to drink beer.

Sheriff’s deputies said the locomotive’s engineer saw the group standing and sitting on the tracks, and sounded his horn in warning but was unable to stop before hitting at least two people, killing them instantly.

The bodies of the two transients, Juan Carlos Ortega, 24, and Sandra Spires, 45, were found dozens of feet south of the point of impact. Spires had been decapitated.

A third person, Eliseo Zarate, 30, was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla with broken ribs, a broken collarbone and many cuts. He was in stable condition in the coronary care unit Monday night. Sgt. Ron Morse of the Encinitas sheriff’s station said Zarate was believed to have been struck by one of the bodies that was hit by the train. Officials did not know where Ortega and Zarate were from.

Officials found a partly consumed 12-pack of beer near the tracks, Morse said.

The train was all the more stealthy, Amtrak officials confirmed, because it was driven by an engine at the rear of the train, not pulled by an engine on the front. As a result, the noise generated by the engine was several cars away when the front car came upon the group.

Robertson said Amtrak would support the posting of signs or the erection of fences around stretches of track where fatalities have occurred, and he said he consides San Diego County an excellent candidate for Operation Lifesaver, a program conducted by the Federal Railroad Assn. in schools and communities to educate people about railroad safety. The best way to avoid accidents, he said, is to modify people’s behavior.

“If people are on our tracks, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t stop on a dime,” he said, noting that trains moving 125 m.p.h. require nearly 2 miles to come to a complete stop. In exchange for a quieter, safer ride, he said, people “also have to be a little bit more aware. It’s a pure tragedy that so many people have become a fatality in such a little time.”

The accident brought the county’s train-related death toll to four this month. On Oct. 13, a 16-year-old Encinitas girl was killed by an Amtrak train while she and two friends were walking along the tracks near her parents’ home in Encinitas. On Oct. 4, a 22-year-old surfer was struck and killed while taking a shortcut on a train trestle to the beach in San Onofre.

Just the day before, a southbound Amtrak train hit an auto-transport truck that was stuck on the tracks in Leucadia. Six train passengers suffered minor injuries.