West Texas train wreckage continues to smolder

Three missing crew members from two freight trains that collided in the Texas Panhandle are presumed dead, officials said Wednesday.

Both lines were reopened before 1 p.m. BNSF officials say crews worked overnight to clear the rail lines and fix damage on the tracks.

“We have moved from rescue operations to recovery operations”, said Sergeant Dan Buesing, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

He was taken to an Amarillo hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and is in stable condition.

Freight cars and containers were derailed and strewn for about 400 yards from the collision site just outside the town of Panhandle, Buesing said.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said that the NTSB has launched an investigation into the accident and the Federal Railroad Administration said that its investigators are on site.

Last Tuesday, two monorails crashed head on near the town of Panhandle, about 25 miles from Amarillo. “We will not be determining the cause while we are here on scene, nor will we speculate about what may have caused this accident”.

Volunteers in Panhandle have received an overwhelming amount of donations from across Texas (Pampa, San Angelo, Amarillo, etc…). Faust said the freight trains were carrying various consumer goods. It also was not clear why the trains were on the same track. On Wednesday, the scene was one of devastation: Amid twisted metal and smoldering hot spots, first responders were on standby and work crews prepared to remove heaps of the charred train cars, which belong to BNSF. Flames were blocking efforts to search the wreckage for the missing crew members.

BNSF said it does not plan to release the identities of the engineers involved in the crash in the immediate future, but NewsChannel10 did speak to a family member of one of the victims on board Wednesday.

PTC makes use of computers, wireless radio and Global Positioning System to monitor the position of trains and automatically slow down or even stop them if there is a risk that they could be derailed or collide with one another.