Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Suicide by train: a tale from the rails

Someone died early this morning on the rail line near Anaheim CA. He stepped into a crossing in front of a Metrolink commuter train around 6am, stretched out his arms and waited for the train to hit him. The engineer couldn't stop in time.

Nearly 100 miles away, when I was getting on the first northbound Amtrak of the day, I read a message crawling across the information sign that the first southbound service was delayed due to a "passenger train trespassing incident". I didn't really think much about it; it wasn't my train, it was miles away. Maybe someone had gotten obstreperous with the conductor, or someone had been seen along the track. It didn't even cross my mind that those words were railway code for a fatality.

But as we left Oceanside at 7am, the man behind me got a call on his cellphone. "Well, then I'm screwed," he said, sounding annoyed. Then I got a call from a colleague who takes Metrolink from Irvine, the midway point. He told me that both lines, southbound and northbound, were blocked north of Anaheim. My colleague expected a prolonged delay, so he turned around and went home to telecommute. The man behind me said his caller told him authorities were waiting for the coroner up in Anaheim.

No one had any internet (or thought to use it). There is internet on some trains, but the low speed connection is spotty and unreliable even if you sit on top of it. I don't have a mobile wireless plan so I'm blind on the train, with my only resource scavenging off any open networks I find with my laptop as we stop in the stations. The little FM radio on my iPod nano couldn't pick up any news stations --coastal Orange County is a notorious dead zone for public radio (figures). And at some level, what did it matter what happened? All that mattered to the passengers, was what would happen to our train, and in regrettably typical Amtrak fashion, they said absolutely nothing at all.

For me, by the time I learned this, choices were few. If the lines were closed, there would be no southbound Amtrak back to San Diego: they'd all be stuck north of Anaheim. So even if I got off at an intermediate station, there's nothing to get on going south, at least nothing that would go all the way. And I'm sitting on the first northbound train, so there's no Amtrak ahead of me to be turned around. Besides, I had meetings in LA today. So I sat it out, and my train kept going north.

The lines reopened after about 3 hours, after the business of death swarmed around the tracks: policemen with yellow tape, railway workers in hard hats, the cleanup crew with bins and tarps. Once north of Anaheim, my train inched its way along with frequent long, sighing stops. Even so, we got to LA with only a 45 minute delay. Much faster than usual, said my Irvine colleague, who has more grim experience than I.

This is the 2nd death that I know of on the LA-San Diego corridor this summer; in June, a man was killed by an overnight freight train near San Clemente under rather creepy circumstances (at 2am, it appears that a group of teenagers watched him get hit). Other lines in the region have also had a number of deaths; sometimes suicide, sometimes stupidity (like walking along the line, or trying to beat the gates). They are depressingly common. I wonder why anyone would choose such a horrible way to die.

I sorrow for the victim today who suffered such despair, and for his family. And I feel for the engineer, at the controls of his massive machine, who was made an unwilling accomplice and saw it all. I hope that help is available to him.

One of my other commute friends told me that in the 4 or 5 years she's been doing this trip, her train has killed 6 people, most of them suicides. I find that quite shocking. So I know that it is inevitable that one day I too will be an accomplice of sorts, a few hundred feet away from death, a passenger on a train that kills a person.


First train through after tracks re-open. Photo: Orange County Register


Cross posted at Friends of Jake, Surfliner stories, Daily Kos, and StreetProphets

6 comments:

MarkBrunson said...

As most who know me are aware, the concept of suicide itself doesn't bother me - desperation is real and it is pointless to pretend otherwise - but to make another do the task for you is cruel and stupid.

David G. said...

I'm thinking death by train would be instantaneous, which may be the reason some people choose it as a way to end their life.
Death by truck could cause all sorts of problems, additional auto accidents, jack knife ...etc. Most people in that state of mind don't intend to take others with them, they're more concerned with themselves.

Point of Order said...

Passenger Trespassing Incidents are not always fatalities, but they always involve humans, trains, injuries and delays.

Remarkably, this occurs with some regularity on the Northeast Corridor in the summer. My experience has been that it usually occurs in the evening on Thursday or Friday. There seems to be a preference for the Acela trains.

But one never becomes accustomed to knowing that someone thought this was the best thing to happen to them, that their remains can be spread over a mile of railway, and that the engineer was an unwilling witness and accomplice to all of this.

I grieve for the departed and those remaining.

Ann said...

Seems to be all a part this state of being - that there is no room for thoughts of who else might be affected. All so sad.

it's margaret said...

Dang.... it is equally sad that those who received the info saw it only as an inconvenience to themselves.... I too sorrow with you IT. --and I think of how long it took for the Golden Gate Bridge folks to put up anti-suicide fences --resisted for decades because it would spoil the 'look' of the bridge... until someone began video-taping the attempts and made them public... it occurs to me --are these suicides always done along certain predictable stretches?

Erp said...

There were 5 suicides at a level crossing in my town between May 2009 and January 2010, all teenagers, all were attending, were entering or had graduated from the same high school. Westboro Church showed up at the high school shortly after the last.