Transcripts for CNN Forensic Files 20140314 08:24:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
on the track over bayou canot. coast guard records show the mauvilla struck the bridge only eight minutes before the sunset limited arrived. as the engineer headed towards the bridge, he saw a green light telling him the track ahead was all clear. as the train approached, i believe that the engine derailed just as it was getting to the portion of the bridge that had been moved sideways, and it hit that portion of the bridge, dragging the entire bridge along with the engines and destroying it. it s a big piece of steel out on the bridge, and the train struck it at 72 miles an hour. and then from that, you can tell it just tore the hell out of it. as the track collapsed, the lead engine and the next four cars flew into the water. some of the passenger cars
bridge up ahead. then, the sunset limited started on the last leg of its trip, 750 miles to miami. the train throttled up to a cruising speed of 72 miles an hour, but visibility was hindered by fog. shortly before 3:00 a.m., the sunset limited approached the bayou canot bridge. in a matter of seconds, the train s three engines and next four cars plummeted into the water. the engine s fuel tanks ruptured igniting the diesel fuel. then the people start yelling. we ve got to get out of here because this is going to explode. the tugboat mauvilla was the first to report the accident. i believe we re right below the train. it s a hell of a fire in the middle of the river.
miles to miami. the train throttled up to a cruising speed of 72 miles an hour, but visibility was hindered by fog. shortly before 3:00 a.m., the sunset limited approached the bayou canot bridge. in a matter of seconds, the train s three engines and next four cars plummeted into the water. the engine s fuel tanks ruptured igniting the diesel fuel. then the people start yelling. we ve got to get out of here because this is going to explode. the mauvilla tugboat was the first to report the accident. we re right below the train. it s a hell of a fire in the middle of the river. it s so foggy i can t tell by looking at radar. there s something bad going on. it was a hell on earth kind of environment. it was just a horrific, horrific sight.
waterway that was closed to commercial boat traffic. bayou canot is a subsidiary of the mobile river and in that very dense fog, the operator of the tug mistakenly turned down into bayou canot thinking it was a bend in the river a couple miles further up river than he really was. but how could this happen? investigators discovered that the mauvilla had no maps on board or even a compass. that s a very important thing except people on the river don t look at it that way. all you do is steer between the banks and that s it. the mauvilla was equipped with radar which wasn t required at the time, but the pilot, willie odom, wasn t trained to use it. when investigators heard odom s story, they went back to the bridge to examine what now seemed like a key piece of evidence.