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Zopp, Shrock and Anderson instantly jumped off their wagon. Flames leapt to the top of the Amtrak cars.
Lomax had returned outside to his pickup. He was about one-half mile away from the private crossing. “At that point I saw the train. Then there were just balls and balls of fire running up the track. I didn’t think it would ever stop,” he said.
Once the truck turned McDevitt could no longer see it. He was 1,000 feet away and he could not see the crossing. “All of a sudden I heard this tremendous boom, I saw the flames underneath the train. The first time I saw the train was then. Flames were shooting into the air also.
“My ambulance was struck by some debris. I got over into the other lane and went into an area near a wooden fence because I figured if that train comes off the tracks I would put it in low gear and go right through the fence, get as far away as I can.”
The Crescent’s engineer saw the truck approach the driveway and saw it turn in, according to Amtrak spokesperson Sue Martin. Amtrak “does not typically release the names of employees,” Ms. Martin said, but she was working Thursday night and related reports that when the engineer saw the truck he applied the brakes and sounded the air horn.
The train, pulled by two engines, was travelling at 77 miles per hour, according to Ms. Martin.
The locomotive cut Wagon 7 in two, carrying the rear of the vehicle hundreds of feet down the line, scattering debris on both sides of the railway bed before it derailed and plowed up 475 feet of track. The train crunched to a stop nearly 1,000 feet from the point of impact, with the red sheet metal of the fire engine’s body wrapped tightly around the front locomotive.
The impact knocked loose and set afire Wagon 7’s 50-gallon fuel tank. Lt. Shrock gave orders to Anderson and Zopp. Shrock and Anderson operated the pumps while Zopp ran forward with the hose toward tank.
“I took the nozzle up there and as soon as I got there I yelled, ‘charge it, charge, it, charge it’,” Zopp said. “And it was charged right away, it was right there.”
They had only water to fight the fuel fire. Anderson went to get dry chemcials. Zopp turned the nozzle skyward and sprayed the water down like rain.
Almost instantly after the crash, Jay McDevitt jumped from his ambulance and raced past Raymond Shrock, who was already operating the pumps on the second Catlett fire uronmn
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