Line Reopens After Fatal Train-Truck Collision

MOORPARK —  Rail traffic resumed Sunday morning after a train-truck collision here Saturday caused an Amtrak train to derail, killing one man and critically injuring another.

Julio Corona Munoz, 23, of Ventura remained unconscious and in critical condition Sunday after suffering severe head injuries in the accident.

The northbound Amtrak train hit the truck in which Munoz was a passenger as the truck crossed the tracks on a private farm road. The train hit the truck broadside and then derailed, plowing three cars onto farmland and causing minor injuries to 28 passengers and one crew member.

Munoz remains at Los Robles Regional Medical Center and is expected to survive, said a hospital spokeswoman. The truck’s driver, Sergio Vargas Mendoza, was killed.

The crash closed normally busy California 118, which runs alongside the railroad tracks. Officials expected to reopen it at 9 p.m. Sunday.

Crews worked all Saturday night to replace 400 feet of rails that were ripped loose by the crash. Workers removed three cars and the train’s engine early Sunday and reopened the tracks by 9 a.m. The first train came through soon afterward, moving slowly past the accident scene.

A fourth car was removed late Saturday and the fifth car, which lies in a farm field out of view of drivers on the road, will take another day or two to remove, officials said.

Investigators from the California Highway Patrol and the National Transportation Safety Board took measurements that will help to reconstruct the accident as a computer model to determine if any equipment on the train malfunctioned.

Dave Watson, regional director of the board, called the situation “heartbreaking” as he looked over what remained of the wreckage, strewn over a field just west of Moorpark.

According to CHP spokesman Dave Webb, a witness said the truck did not appear to halt at a stop sign south of the unprotected crossing, but instead it continued slowly north across the tracks.

The train was moving west about 70 miles an hour, Webb said, and although the engineer sounded the horn and applied the emergency brake, the train did not have enough room to stop before slamming into the truck.

On Sunday morning, while investigators began what they expect to be a monthlong investigation into the crash, Munoz’s family waited at the hospital for news of his condition.

Sandy Gonzales, Munoz’s aunt, is starting a fund to defray the costs of Munoz’s treatment and to help Mendoza’s widow and his 3-year-old son.

Mendoza was his family’s sole breadwinner, she said, and he and Munoz were good friends.

They were delivering wood chips to a landfill at the end of the farm road they were using at the time of the accident, Webb said.