Richard Sanders arrived right behind Thompson. “It was surreal,”

Richard Sanders arrived right behind Thompson. “It was surreal,” Sanders recalled. “It was very surrealistic, it was all linear, and there was this light, a little twilight, and the lights were going up.” He first headed through the cars, checking for plates bearing numbers. The numbers were hard to find, and he couldn’t see in the train.

He was put in charge of emergency medical operations. “I kept him glued to me,” Thompson said.

Thompson was busy making decisions. “I couldn’t guess how many decisions I made that night. You put plan A into action, and if that doesn’t work, you try plan B.”

Thompson turned his attention to the lounge car. Rescue workers were violating safety procedures by clambering up to pull out passengers.

“Nearly every safety principle in the world was violated,” Thompson said. But “firefighters and police are trained to be aggressive in saving people.” Instead of trying to stop them, he put an alternative plan into action: shore up the car.

They used what was at hand: the railroad ties ripped out and littered by the train. A Southern Railway official said “they couldn’t have done a better job,’’and a cave-in unit from Fairfax concurred.

When the helicopter Lt. Craun had called in arrived it hovered over the remains of the crushed cab, throwing light but unable to land to transport the three injured firefighters to hospitals.

Thompson and Sanders could not make radio contact. “It was the biggest frustration of the night,” Sanders said. They needed a landing site and I couldn’t talk to them. Their light was shining down, it was surreal.”

It tooks two or three minutes to make contact and get the helicopter down, but “it seemed like forever.”

He hurriedly charged Chief Fred Wines of The Plains with the task of communications officer. Sheriffs