By:Jeff Lipton
For about 10 harrowing seconds, David Willinger of Woodmere and his fellow passengers on the Long Island Rail Road were taken for a ride of their lives last Thursday afternoon - and did not know if they would make it out in one piece.
Their eastbound train collided with a construction crane doing maintenance work on an adjacent track shortly after the train left the Hewlett station at around 3 p.m. May 17. Willinger got a front- row seat as the left side of the train sideswiped the side of the crane cab just before the Franklin Avenue crossing.
"It happened right by me," Willinger said. "The steering wheel of the crane was crushed down, bent and mangled."
A worker on the crane was knocked off upon impact and fell between the second and third rails of the train track. Another worker, Willinger said, saw his co-worker in trouble and helped him up before he touched the third rail, which carries enough electricity to kill.
"I'm surprised nobody got killed on the crane," Willinger said. "It looked like it went through a compactor. Thank God it wasn't worse."
Willinger was coming from Manhattan, and it was the first time in four years that he decided to take the train.
Passengers who were in the first car of the train said they felt a jolt and heard the crane scrape the train's window and bounce off the windows three times before the train came to a halt "and then everything went dead," said Marilyn Keslowitz of Far Rockaway. The left side of the front of the train was partially sheared off in the collision.
Bonnie Schertz of Lawrence and Hilda Heller of Woodmere were next to each other on the train as they were arriving home after working in Manhattan. When the train struck the crane, they held onto each other for dear life.
"It sounded like it hit a car," Schertz said. "We ducked and held onto each other. It then sounded like a car was being dragged and then suddenly it stopped dragging."
They said all the passengers remained calm and were not panicky or screaming and some checked on fellow passengers to make sure everyone was okay.
"No one jumped out of their seat," Heller said. "We were actually in shock, not knowing if someone had been killed or hit."
Another passenger who was in the first car and was headed to Lawrence said, "I heard a thud and I thought the train was going to flip and then the train came to a halt."
The train, the 2:09 p.m. from Flatbush, scheduled to arrive in Far Rockaway at 3:13, was carrying 80 to 100 passengers, LIRR spokesman Sam Zambuto said. Six passengers and four LIRR employees, including the crane operator and the train engineer, received injuries, all minor, according to Rod Legrow, first assistant chief of the Hewlett Fire Department, who along with paramedic Jason Gluck was among the first ones on the scene. The injuries included neck and back pain, hypertension, a cut lip and a cracked tooth, Legrow said. Four of the injured were taken to Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream and three each to South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside and Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, he said.
Six ambulances were on the scene, and providing assistance for the injured were Woodmere Fire Department, Lynbrook Fire Department and Nassau County Police Department. Many of the other passengers were brought to the nearby Hewlett Firehouse, where they were checked out before they were sent on school buses to their destinations.
The crash suspended service in both directions for more than four hours and Zambuto said the LIRR was providing bus service between Valley Stream and Far Rockaway. Train tickets were being honored on the N32 and N33 routes. Workers used cranes to lift the wreckage from the tracks.
The train wreck was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Railroad Administration and the LIRR. But at least one investigator suggested "human error" may have been involved. "Humans were working, so there was some error on somebody's part," said Greg Caronia, a fire service rep for the county Emergency Management Office. "Men were working on the track and controlling certain pieces of equipment. If there was failure, the investigation will uncover it," he said. "The train, the crane, everybody was in control of all the equipment."
Guy Capone of Frost Lane in Hewlett was picking up his daughter at nearby Franklin Early Childhood Center when he heard the collision. "I heard a 'boom' sound. I knew something didn't sound right, like a crane falling down. It's unbelievable, and thank God, there's not more serious injuries on that train."
Paul Frasco, the Hewlett postmaster, came running out of the Post Office when he heard the crash. "It sounded like it was coming through the Post Office," he said. "It was quite loud. The train was peeled open like a tuna can."
He commended the LIRR workers for their quick actions in averting a tragedy, particularly the worker who helped his co-worker avert the third rail. "He was wedged between the two rails and his buddy helped him heroically and got him out from between the two rails and protected him," Frasco said. "This had a lot of potential for disaster. The employees of the railroad had quick and excellent actions."
