NORTH BERWICK — A tractor-trailer truck hauling garbage to a Biddeford incinerator slammed into a northbound Amtrak Downeaster train Monday, killing the driver, 35 year-old Peter Barnum of Farmington, N.H.

The crash at the grade level Varney Crossing on Route 4 sparked a fire in the train engine and at least one of the passenger cars. One of the cars derailed.

“I saw flames on the east side of the train windows and smelled fire,” wrote passenger Jack Barry, who was on his annual vacation to Maine. “”˜Get out.’ My only thought (was to) get out,” he wrote in an email to the Journal Tribune.

A witness said the front of the train was engulfed in flames.

North Berwick Deputy Fire Chief Larry Straffin said the train’s engineer, whose name was not immediately available, managed to uncouple the engine from the passenger cars, preventing the fire from spreading further. The engine came to rest about 500 yards from the passenger cars, between the Route 4 crossing and the grade level crossing at Main Street.

Barnum was ejected from the truck. The cab was separated from the trailer and smashed into several pieces that were strewn down the track. Barnum was working for Triumvirate Environmental Inc., a trucking company based in Massachusetts.

North Berwick Police Chief Stephen Peasley this morning said his department will work with railroad police to try and determine why the truck didn’t stop. He said they’ll download data and a video from the train.

“We’ll compare it with evidence from the scene,” he said.

None of the 112 passengers and three crew members were seriously hurt. Three were treated at Goodall Hospital in Sanford, said hospital spokeswoman Kristen Hill, two for smoke inhalation and the third for a head injury. One of those treated was the train engineer, Straffin said. Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole said four passengers and two members of the crew were reported injured. Their injuries were thought to be minor ”“ they were treated and released, he said.

Witnesses told fire and police officials that safety lights at Varney Crossing, where the train crosses Route 4, were flashing and the gates were down when the crash took place. The truck left 200 feet of skid marks on the pavement as the trucker tried to stop the rig. The collision, said people living in the area, sounded like a bomb.

Rob Conley was in his duplex apartment parallel to the tracks when he heard the crash.

“I jumped up and looked out the window and saw the Amtrak on fire. The front end was engulfed in flames. It sounded like a bomb going off,” said Conley, who served with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne division in Iraq.

Conley said he went down to the tracks and discovered the truck driver’s body.

Peasley this morning said when police were called to the Route 4 grade level crossing at 11:05 a.m. Monday there was so much smoke he couldn’t see down the tracks.

“There was black smoke and fire everywhere,” he said.

Passengers were evacuated to Main Street by emergency personnel in pick-up trucks, open Jeeps, and some off-road vehicles. Friends and family members thronged the Main Street area, waiting to pick up their friends and loved ones.

Steve Newick said his wife and two children were on the train.

“She called. They’re all fine,” he said.

John Luff came to pick up Jack Barry, who was arriving from Philadelphia. Barry usually drives to Maine, but decided to take the train because he thought it would be relaxing, Luff said. Luff said Barry called and was comforting other passengers.

Matt Johnson of North Berwick said he was working nearby.

“It sounded like a shotgun. Then there were sirens all over town,” he said, watching as passengers arrived at the Main Street crossing.

Authorities don’t yet have the exact number, but it is thought that there were more than 17 rescue crews and fire departments on hand to lend aid.

Peasley, the police chief, said each North Berwick agency, including police, fire and rescue workers, coordinated with mutual aid departments.

“We all worked together,” he said. 

At mid-afternoon, as firefighters continued to extinguish hot spots along the track at the Route 4 crossing, temperatures topped 90 degrees and the stench of the garbage strewn over the tracks was overpowering.

Cleanup crews worked into the night to remove the debris.

Service on the route was delayed after the collision, and passengers completed the trip to Portland by bus.

Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, said the collision could have been far worse. Last month, a man drove a semitrailer into the side of a passenger train in Nevada in a fiery crash that killed six people and injured more than 20.

Nearly 1,400 passengers a day ride the Portland-to-Boston service. Quinn said service was restored this morning. She said the speed through a section of track near the crash site will be 10 mph, so delays are possible.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

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A passenger’s view of the fatal crash

Passenger Jack Barry of Philadelphia penned this account of his experience on the Amtrak Downeaster that was hit by a tractor-trailer on Route 4 in North Berwick Monday. Barry was on his way to Maine for an annual vacation.

The engine was followed by an empty passenger car and then the car Barry was in, which contained several people, among them two senior citizens and a mother with three or four children.

Here’s what he wrote in an e-mail to the Journal Tribune:

“A few minutes after we pulled out of Dover (N.H.), something happened. It felt like when you are in a car and hit a speed bump. I was thrown up off my seat for a second, hit my head on the seat in front of me. I turned to my left and realized something serious was wrong, there was debris flying past the windows. I later saw it was garbage from the truck we had hit,” he wrote.

“I saw flames on the east side of the train windows and smelled fire. ”˜Get out.’ My only thought. ”˜Get out.’ I didn’t know which way the fire was. It took a minute to realize that the fire was forward and we need to go backward to get out. The train doors would not open and the smell of fire was getting heavy. Smoke was visible. Someone thought that we needed to crack the emergency windows but we had no idea of where the fire was. Was it under the train? Were we allowing smoke to get in if we popped the windows? Two windows were popped and I looked out and saw fire north/forward ”¦ but then looked south/back and saw fire that direction also.

I knew we had to get off the train quickly. The drop was about 7 feet to the stone track bed, too far to drop kids and the elderly. Finally, an Amtrak employee opened the forward door, pulled the steps and we exited, the forward steps were of course next to the second empty car, which was on fire.

It was surreal. We were instructed to sit on the side of the track bed until rescue arrived. The smoke was billowing from both ends of the train; the engine had been decoupled from the rest of the train and was about three blocks forward. It was burning. The second car was in small flames, and had derailed. That the entire train did not derail was amazing.

The two female conductors were calm and very reassuring; they did the very best they could under the circumstances.

There was a Marine or some type of military guy who took control of the ground people and started a triage operation and really helped calm the situation.

Everyone was grateful to be alive.”