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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Train-track suicides take toll on engineers

The man laid his head on the railroad tracks in Spokane Valley and stared at the oncoming freight train.

The BNSF train engineer sounded her horn, put on her emergency brakes and averted her eyes.

“When we talked to her later, she was shaking and sobbing,” Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Dave Reagan said. “They are put in a horrible position to have to deal with someone else’s life decision.”

BNSF and Union Pacific railroad officials say train engineers are trained to expect they’ll kill someone at some point in their career. Nationwide 565 people were killed on railways during the first eight months of this year.

“It’s cruel to the people who drive those trains,” Reagan said.

The suspected suicide in the Valley last week marked the 14th in Washington on all railways since the beginning of the year, said Gus Melonas, BNSF spokesman. Fourteen is Washington’s annual average for deaths, based on statistics from the Federal Railway Administration.

Idaho is significantly lower, with just two train deaths through August – both in Kootenai County. A Spirit Lake city councilman was killed in April, and a 24-year-old Athol man died in January.

This year is typical in one way: Nationwide, more than half of the train fatalities involved people on foot, officials say. Those deaths include suicides, those who think they can beat an oncoming train across the tracks and those who don’t hear the train because they are wearing headphones or are distracted by a cell phone conversation.

Other than the noise of a train barreling down the tracks, an engineer’s only warning signal is a horn. Trains can’t stop on a dime.

On Tuesday, the BNSF train was traveling 50 mph when the 20-something man put himself in its path. At that speed – even with empty rail cars – it would have taken nearly a mile to stop the locomotive.

Kraig Hansen, a BNSF engineer for two years, said so far no one has picked one of his trains to carry out suicide, but he recognizes the possibility.

“There’s some things you don’t want to have to go through, but (as a conductor) you’ll have to,” said Hansen, 24. “Watching someone put themselves in front of your train makes you feel responsible, even if you aren’t.”

When there’s a fatality, the train stops while an investigation is performed, and the engineer is typically relieved from his route, BNSF and Union Pacific officials said. The engineer is then given whatever assistance is needed to deal with the traumatic experience. BNSF offers counseling, Melonas said.

Union Pacific calls for help automatically, using its volunteer peer-support program, said spokesman James E. Barnes.

Before participating in the program, each volunteer receives 12 hours of basic psychology training,” according to Union Pacific’s description of the program. “They are also instructed in the proper way to identify situations that may require professional help and how to refer a co-worker to a health professional.”

Afterward, a peer-support person stays in contact with the coworker to provide coping skills and will reach out periodically to check his or her progress, Barnes said. Union Pacific has more than 500 peer-support volunteers who are on call all the time.

Hansen said that if his train kills someone, he’d rather be left alone to cope.

“But everybody’s different,” he said.

“I would hate for something like that to happen to me,” Hansen said. “It’s like someone coming into your work and killing themselves. It’s an experience you don’t want to happen.”