The BLET Safety Task Force has received Party Status from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to assist with the investigation of two serious Norfolk Southern incidents.
In the first incident, a conductor was killed last week when he was struck by a train in Whiting, Ind. In the second incident, a worker was severely injured after he was coupled between rail cars during a switching accident earlier this week in Louisville, Ky. These investigations follow another serious safety lapse on NS in recent weeks. In June, the STF and NTSB launched an investigation into a major NS derailment, fire, and ethanol spill in Eastern Tennessee.
BLET Vice President Randy Fannon, who also serves as Chairman of the union’s Safety Task Force, said the BLET cannot publicly comment or speculate on the cause of these accidents due to its Party Status with NTSB. However, the task force will investigate the accidents from the viewpoint of locomotive engineers and trainmen to help determine what occurred and how to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. The BLET became the first labor union in the railroad industry to establish a formal accident investigation team when it created the Safety Task Force in 1989.