Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 41 - Visibility Zero - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 1993 the amtrak railroad experienced the deadliest train crash in united states history
47 passengers and crew were killed 103 more were injured the cause of the accident was unclear
the clues to this mystery were etched in twisted steel and buried in the mud of an alabama bio
waiting for investigators to find them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] amtrak sunset limited is the country's
only remaining transcontinental train the sunset limited has an interesting history kind of dates back to the
romantic time of train travel when it was very elegant and posh to travel by train
on september 20th 1993 trudy justin and her husband larry boarded the sunset limited in deming new mexico headed for
florida and i could sit there and look and talk to other people but the best part is going to the dining car we went
to the dining car three times a day and you just trot back there and they were really nice to you
[Music] after dinner trudy and larry returned to their seats to rest the train stopped briefly in new orleans
to fix a broken air conditioner by 2 30 a.m it was running about 33 minutes behind schedule
it stopped in mobile alabama where the engineer waited until a freight train cleared the bridge up ahead
then the sunset limited started on the last leg of its trip 750 miles to miami the train throttled up to a cruising
speed of 72 miles an hour but visibility was hindered by fog shortly before 3 am the sunset limited
approached the bayou cannot bridge in a matter of seconds the train's three engines and next four
cars plummeted into the water the engine's fuel tanks ruptured igniting the diesel fuel
then the people start yelling we got to get out of here because this is going to
explode the tugboat marvella was the first to report the accident i believe we're right below the train
here's a hell of a fire in the middle of the river ain't supposed to be no fire behind like they don't know exactly
where we at is so far again i can't tell she's never looking on radar so there's
something bad wrong up here it was a hell on earth kind of an environment it was just
a horrific horrific sight trudy grabbed her husband larry and swam for sure the fire just was getting
bigger you see nothing i heard people saying oh we're gonna die we're gonna die and i heard the lord's prayer
the movilla headed towards the flames through the dense fog to investigate i didn't know where the boat came from
we had no idea all we know is the spotlight's on us and of course we could see that it was you could hear it
the crew pulled 17 passengers from the water others were less fortunate the parents
of a little girl she was 10 years old and handicapped they pushed her to the arms of a rescuer through a window
on their car and they didn't make it out [Music] of the 220 passengers and crew on board
47 people were dead or unaccounted for the fbi immediately flew to the crash site to
investigate the possibility of terrorism the coast guard and the national transportation safety board also sent
investigators the lead locomotive was found buried in the mud at about a 45 degree
angle and three quarters of it you could not see it just buried itself into the marsh
a second engine was alongside a third was on the opposite side of the bridge four derailed cars were nearby
as a local salvage crew began the grim task of pulling the dead from the bayou investigators wanted to know
what caused the deadliest accident in amtrak history in the early hours of september 22 1993
amtrak sunset limited plummeted off the bayou cannot bridge in alabama killing 42 passengers and five crew members
ten minutes before the sunset limited derailed a freight train crossed the bridge in
the opposite direction without incident [Music] so what happened in those 10 minutes
divers recovered the trains event recorder from the bayou which is like an airlines flight data recorder
the tape revealed the train was traveling at 72 miles per hour and there was no brake application
whatever caused the crash the engineer never saw it investigators also discovered the
signals on the track were green the signals are controlled by a current that goes through the rail
and if the rail breaks the signal will immediately turn red so the signal didn't turn red
the bridge was originally built in three sections the southern section was a 165-foot
steel truss bridge the center section a single 140-foot steel girder was originally designed to
pivot so river traffic could pass through the northern section was simply 192 feet of track laid on top of a
wooden trestle the center section was totally destroyed despite its design the swing feature of the bridge was
never used and investigators discovered it wasn't connected properly since they never did use it as a swing
bridge they never did put in the same amount of tie downs at the ends of the bridge to hold it in place
divers also examined the wood pilings that supported the bridge we wanted to determine if the
piles had undergone any kind of deterioration such as damage from wood destroying organisms
like soft rod or brown rod decay under a powerful microscope scientists examined the cell walls of
the samples they look for triangular shaped microorganisms like these which would
indicate rot since we didn't find them present then we were fairly comfortable that
there was no appreciable deterioration of the piles contributing to the collapse
all that remained were three concrete piers when investigators looked more closely
they discovered that the steel plates used to connect the bridge to the concrete were displaced 48 inches out of
alignment corley also examined the bolts that attached the metal plates to the concrete
those attachments were poorly maintained in several cases the holes that were supposed to have
bolts through them didn't have anything recognizable in them when we took the material out
that was in those holes we found that it was rust when the sunset limited was pulled out of the water of bayou cannot
with sections of the bridge it was evident that something terrible had happened investigators found
that one of its sides a metal girder had been sheared off as if struck on the end
by a powerful force carly measured the spacing of the girders rivets and compared them to scratches along the
side of the train's engine the rivets made lines down the side of the engine and
you could match the lines made by those rivets with the bridge and confirm that that was what destroyed the girder on
the bridge but how did the train hit the outside of the bridge while structural engineers examined all
the evidence coast guard investigators began interviewing eyewitnesses what they were about to learn
would provide a surprising lead to the investigation [Applause] investigators had many questions but few
answers to what caused the crash of amtrak sunset limited coast guard investigators also
interviewed the men and women who helped in the rescue my first stop was actually to interview
the crew of the tugboat moth villa and that was because they were the reporting party of the accident
on the night of the crash the marvello was making a routine run up the mobile river pushing a load of coal
and pig iron the movilla was pushing six barges so the pilot was 400 feet away from the
front of the barges investigators learned that the pilot willie odom called the coast guard three
hours before the train crashed to report thick fog on the mobile river about a half hour before the accident
odom said he steered his six barges around a bend in the mobile river and saw what appeared to be
another tugboat on his radar he said he steered towards it hoping to tie onto it until visibility improved
but before that could happen willie odom said his tugboat ran aground at this point captain andrew stabler
took over command of the marvella and called the coast guard asking for help seems to have a cable or something
wrapped in the wheel barges will float a drift southbound and if anybody down there can help round them up i would
definitely appreciate it around 2 50 a.m the marvelous crew heard a crash then saw a fire through the fog
i'm not sure what i'm seeing but i'm seeing something that's burning and it looks like it's crossways of the river i
got out that far if that's what i'm looking at i don't have any idea but if the marvello was on the mobile
river how were they able to see an accident on the bayou cannot six miles away but that was a mistake
the accident was on the bridge going across the bayou cannot a waterway that was closed to commercial boat traffic
bayou cannot is a subsidiary of the mobile river and in that very dense fog the operator
of the tug mistakenly turned down into bayou cannot thinking it was a bend in the river a couple of miles further up
river than where he really was but how could this happen investigators discovered that the
movilla had no maps on board or even a compass that's a very important thing but the
people in the river don't look at it that way so what all you do is steer between the banks and that's it
the movilla was equipped with radar which wasn't required at the time but the pilot willie odom wasn't trained to
use it the conclusion he didn't know anything about the radar you could turn it on you
could look at it tell you the picture on everybody didn't know anything about the function of the radar
when investigators heard odom's story they went back to the bridge to examine what now seemed like a key piece of
evidence the railroad bridge had a concrete pier that was holding up the bridge structure
and there was very fresh damage to the concrete of that bridge pier something had hit the point of the pier
was it one of the marvellous barges had the marvella caused the sunset limited to derail
when we found the left-hand barge there was a similar mark of scrape paint and an indentation
into the middle in fact it kind of looked t-shaped which would indicate that the barge hit the
top or flat portion as well as the edge of it and it kind of gave it a little t-shaped mark
the other barges revealed more surprising clues the center barge also had damage there
were vertical scrapes and an indentation a clue to the cause of the scrapes was found on the bridge's center span
when we pulled the girder out of the water we did a visual inspection and we noticed that some of the vertical steel
members called stiffeners that were on the side of the girder had been bent flat against the girder
investigators measured the distance between the stiffeners and compared them to the
vertical marks on the barge they were a perfect match now they had solid evidence to prove what
caused the fatal crash of the sunset limited authorities knew that the tugboat movilla was in the vicinity of the bayou
cannot bridge shortly before the train crash and not on the mobile river as the pilot thought
investigators discovered concrete chips on the movilla's front left barge the chips along with samples from the
bridge's pier were sent to the fbi for analysis each mix of concrete is unique it has a
specific amount of rocks sand cement and water the investigators cut the concrete
samples into razor thin slices then studied them under a transmitter light microscope
the microscope shines polarized light through the samples revealing the specific optical properties of the rocks
sand and cement the fbi after they examined the samples they found on the barge determined that
the concrete on the barge was the same as that found in the pier at the south end of
the bridge based on all the evidence the national transportation safety board concluded that willie odom had gotten
lost in the heavy fog as he piloted the marvella up the mobile river with no maps or compass on board
odom wasn't trained to read the boat's radar he mistakenly veered left onto the bio
cannot instead of continuing up the mobile river odom then mistook the radar image of the bridge
for another tow barge as he tried to maneuver towards it his front left barge struck the concrete
south pier the other two barges struck the bridge itself knocking the bridge and the train
track 48 inches out of alignment when odom struck the bridge he didn't know it in part because he
couldn't see the bridge through the fog since it was unlighted odom mistakenly believed
he had run aground inexplicably the collision bent the track in an s shape but didn't break it which explains
why the electrical current running through the tracks didn't break either had the track been severed sure that
signal would have gone off down the line and would have been a warning in mobile
that something was wrong at the track over by you counter coast guard records showed the movilla
struck the bridge only eight minutes before the sunset limited arrived as the engineer headed towards the
bridge he saw a green light telling him the track ahead was all clear as the train approached i believe that
the engine derailed just as it was getting to the portion of the bridge that had been
moved sideways and it hit that portion of the bridge dragging the entire bridge along with
the engines and destroying it it's a big piece of steel out on the bridge and the train struck it at 72 miles an
hour and then from that you can tell that it just tore the hell out of it as the track collapsed the lead engine
and the next four cars flew into the water some of the passenger cars stopped on
the bridge or the fatality count might have been higher tragically the train was running about a half hour
late due to the stop to repair the air conditioning had the train been on time it would have crossed the bridge
before the movilla ran into it i think this investigation just confirmed for me a couple of
long-standing philosophies that i've had one is that every accident is a kind of a chain reaction there's
five or six links in the chain that all have to happen in order for an accident to happen
they never did put in the same amount of tie-downs at the ends of the bridge to hold it in place
therefore it wasn't as resistant to a barge hitting it as it would have been if they had
tied it down at the ends better people cause accidents and that was clearly the case here
the lord is my shepherd therefore can i lack nothing he feeds me in a green pasture and
leaves me beside the waters a year after the accident survivors gathered to remember those who
lost their lives by then new regulations were in place to prevent similar accidents
tug boats are now required to have radar on board and all operators are required
to have formal training and how to use it the boats are also required to have a compass on board as well as the
necessary maps and river charts [Music] if the marvella had only had a compass on board
this accident might never have happened had there been a compass willy oda might have realized he was
making a left turn and not gone down the the wrong channel into bayou cannot there's also a requirement for all
bridges to have lighting even those on waterways closed to commercial traffic willie odom was cleared of any criminal
charges but he never again piloted a tugboat i think my main interest in all of the jobs i get into is to
determine what went wrong so that we can learn from the bad things that have happened in the
past and do better in the future i can't prevent what's happened but if i learn lessons from it and then make
changes in rules regulations and procedures i've done a lot to prevent that next one from happening
[Music]

In 1993, the Amtrak Railroad experienced the deadliest train crash in United States history when the Sunset Limited derailed while crossing Alabama's Big Bayou Canot bridge. Forty-seven passengers and crew were killed; scores more were injured.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The 1993 Amtrak Sunset Limited crash killed 47 due to a tugboat collision with a bridge, leading to new safety regulations.

Key points

The Deadliest Train Crash. In 1993, the Amtrak Sunset Limited experienced the deadliest train crash in U.S. history, killing 47.
Survivors Remember. A year after the accident, survivors gathered to remember those lost and discuss new regulations.

Episode highlights

Survivors RememberA year after the accident, survivors gathered to remember those lost and discuss new regulations.“Survivors gathered to remember those who lost their lives.”19:56Dec 16, 2021

Episode quotes

It was a hell on earth kind of an environment.

Describing the chaos during the train crash.

3:12WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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