Sound Transit safety executive removed in wake of fatal 2017 Amtrak derailment near DuPont
A Sound Transit official lost his job Wednesday following a new report on the 2017 Amtrak train crash that killed three people near DuPont. The report concluded Sound Transit failed to follow its safety plans and did not understand its role in preventing the derailment that also injured scores of people.
Sound Transit commissioned the report after the May release of the National Transportation Safety Board’s findings on the Dec. 18, 2017 derailment that shut down Interstate 5 for two days.
“That review is now complete, and the findings are sobering,” Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff said Wednesday.
The agency will present the findings Thursday at its Rider Experience and Operations Board committee meeting.
Salah Al-Tamimi, the agency’s chief safety officer, was removed from his position, Rogoff said Wednesday. The removal was effective immediately.
“The findings of the report were certainly a major contributing factor to that decision,” Rogoff told The News Tribune. Al-Tamimi held the position for roughly five years, Rogoff said.
Sound Transit also is restructuring.
Safety and quality now will be two different departments at Sound Transit, Rogoff said. Moises Gutierrez was named as the interim head of the new safety division while a national search for a permanent chief is conducted.
Sound Transit is the owner of the track where the derailment occurred but does not operate any trains on it. It purchased the track in 2005 as part of its Tacoma to Lakewood Sounder commuter rail extension.
New Amtrak derailment report
The final factor in the 2017 catastrophe’s long chain of failures was the train’s engineer, who took a turn at an I-5 overpass at 78 miles per hour. The train should have been going no faster than 30 mph.
As the NTSB report pointed out, the engineer was set up to fail on that inaugural run of the new Point Defiance Bypass route.
Sound Transit didn’t follow its own safety procedures, the new report concluded. The independent review was conducted by Oregon-based L & H Consulting.
Findings from the report included:
▪ Sound Transit staff wrongly believed that the state Department of Transportation, not Sound Transit, was responsible for overseeing Amtrak training and qualifications.
▪ A safety plan was not made for the Point Defiance Bypass.
▪ Fully simulated runs were not performed as required by Sound Transit policy.
▪ Sound Transit did not fully understand its responsibilities as the host railroad.
▪ Proposed hazard mitigations were not appropriately sent up the chain of command and reviewed. Instead, they were rubber stamped.
Safety hazards are not created equally. They go through various reviews and personnel at Sound Transit, based on severity.
“If they are of a certain level of concern, they are elevated,” Rogoff said. “In this case, that process wasn’t rigorously adhered to.”
Rogoff himself should have signed off on hazards of the highest level.
“That latter part didn’t happen,” he said.
Rogoff said his agency already is implementing some of the report’s recommendations and will implement the remainder before the bypass is reopened.
“We will not assume, but rather rigorously verify, that Amtrak’s personnel training and testing programs for operation are more than sufficient and that their general orders to their crew have been appropriately amended to reflect operations on Sound Transit track,” Rogoff said.
Positive Train Control, an engineering system that prevents a variety of rail accidents and could have stopped the DuPont disaster, now has been installed and is operating on the corridor.
In addition, the speed limit on the track approaching the overpass now goes from 79 to 50 mph before slowing to 30 at the curve. Signage has been increased.
NTSB report
In May, the NTSB laid the blame on multiple agencies, chief among them Sound Transit. The agency missed multiple opportunities to warn about and mitigate the dangerous curve, the NTSB said.
“The probable cause of the Amtrak 501 derailment was Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority’s (Sound Transit) failure to provide an effective mitigation for the hazardous curve without positive train control in place, which allowed the Amtrak engineer to enter the 30-mph curve at too high of a speed due to his inadequate training on the territory and inadequate training on the newer equipment,” the NTSB concluded.
Rogoff mentioned the unique partnership between Sound Transit, Amtrak and WSDOT that put the Cascades train on the track that day but did not use that as excuse for the derailment.
“One of the findings of the NTSB report that was found to be quite on point by our own internal review was the amount of confusion that was allowed to languish over who was responsible for what,” Rogoff said. “Which is just unacceptable in a safety circumstance.”
The NTSB recommended that Sound Transit review its safety mitigation, coordinate with rail partners and develop an action plan to address deficiencies.
The new report was initiated following that recommendation.
Returning to service
Rogoff declined to estimate when the Amtrak Cascades trains would try again to launch service on the Point Defiance Bypass. The other agencies involved — Amtrak, WSDOT — have a say in it.
“We will be making quintupely sure we have lived up to all of our regulatory responsibilities,” Rogoff said. “We will no longer be taking any other agency’s word for it that they have fulfilled responsibilities that are ours to verify.”
Amtrak will not be allowed on the bypass until Sound Transit is satisfied every requirement has been met, Rogoff said.
In its report, the NTSB cited aging train cars as a factor in passenger injuries during the crash.
In August, WSDOT was awarded a $37.5 million federal grant to purchase new train equipment. The money will buy at least three sets of passenger rail cars for the Cascades service, WSDOT said.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:00 PM.
