Death By Fire and Water

By SOPHFRONIA SCOTT GREGORY

The train was 34 minutes late, timing that in the end proved fatal. At 2:50 a.m. Amtrak's Sunset Limited reached the wood-and-steel span over Big Bayou Canot in Alabama. It had crossed the bridge dozens of times since its Los Angeles-to-Miami route was inaugurated in April. And so, with 210 people on board, it came confidently down the tracks -- and into the worst accident in Amtrak's 23-year history.

Apparently, just minutes before, the tugboat MV Mauvilla had had an encounter with the same bridge. Pushing a tow of six barges strapped together, the ship had taken a wrong turn on the Mobile river and strayed into the bayou. In the fog and darkness, however, the barges became unlashed and began drifting. According to expert speculation last week, they may have hit the bridge, which was too low to let them pass. Someone on the tugboat radioed the Coast Guard for help. By then, however, the Sunset Limited roared into sight -- and plunged straight into disaster. The bridge gave way, and three locomotives and four cars careered into the alligator-infested swamp waters.

"It's real bad here," the tugboat pilot said in a frantic radio message. "There's a train that ran off the track into the water, and there's lots of people that need help, and there's a fire. Hurry and get out here, Coast Guard. I'm going to try to help some of them." Four other cars remained on the bridge, including one that dangled precariously over the edge.

Meanwhile, the passengers in the water struggled to escape from drowning and burning. George Simpson, 73, and his wife Carole, 56, were returning home to Gulf Breeze, Florida, from California on the Sunset Limited when the disaster struck. "Things were exploding all around us," says Carole. "If a spark had gotten near us, there was nothing we could have done to put it out."

The final death toll stood at 47. Not until Friday afternoon could rescuers retrieve the bodies of three crew members who had been trapped inside the lead locomotive, buried in 15 feet of mud. Miraculously, some passengers managed to escape even from a car totally submerged in the bayou. Bill Crosson, 57, had grabbed his wife Vivian, 52, holding her down so she wouldn't be thrown about as the train fell into the swamp. Water then came rushing in. "It just filled so quickly," he says. "All I could think about was 'we're goners.' " But the couple found an air pocket that gave them time enough to find an escape route. The Crossons had felt others around them "pushing and pulling" to get out the same way. Many, the Crossons remember, acted heroically. A conductor urged people to swim to shore, lighting and pointing the way with a flashlight. Others supported and saved those who could not swim. Two young men used a long board to help the Crossons and others make it to shore. It was only later that the Crossons discovered that just a handful of people from the submerged car had made it out alive. The rest had no time to save themselves. Says Brad Dicks, another survivor: "Death rolled in with the water."