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Federal board releases documents on Green Line trolley crash

Print | Comments () Posted by Martin Finucane November 10, 2010 01:32 PM

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NTSB

Investigators took this photo of the front end of the car operated by Aiden Quinn.

By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff

A Green Line employee working at the time of a trolley crash in 2009 near the Government Center station told federal officials investigating the crash that "people were in a panic state."

After the sudden impact, said Jimmy Zhu, "The lights -- the lighting on my train went out, and people were yelling and screaming."

Zhu, the operator of the trailer car -- the second trolley in the attached, two-trolley set -- that was struck from behind that night, described trying to keep his composure and walking through his car, encountering passengers with head lacerations and orthopedic injuries.

A transcript of Zhu's interview was among the hundreds of pages of documents that were released this morning by a federal board investigating the crash allegedly caused by a texting trolley operator.

The public docket, which can be found here, includes photos, track maintenance reports, and interviews with multiple Green Line employees describing the impact and the scene

The May 8, 2009, crash in an outbound tunnel near Government Center station injured 46 passengers and destroyed nearly $10 million worth of MBTA equipment. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an ongoing investigation. The docket released today includes a wealth of fact-finding materials but it does not yet include the final report and analysis, which is still months away, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said.

The docket does not include an interview with the operator who allegedly caused the accident by writing a text message while driving the trolley, and who faces a criminal charge. That operator, Aiden Quinn, was arraigned in July 2009 and faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 if found guilty of gross negligence by a person in control of a train, a seldom-used statute that dates to the 19th century. Quinn entered a plea of not guilty through his attorney at the arraignment and is awaiting trial.

Charles A. Hanna, the trailer operator of the two-trolley set being driven by Quinn, told the NTSB that he felt two impacts that knocked him out of his seat and dislodged his glasses. After he radioed an emergency call and walked through the train to check on injured passengers, he went to the front, where he encountered a wobbly Quinn. The lead operator told him, "We hit a train. We hit a train in front," and then keeled over, Hanna said.

In the aftermath of the accident, the MBTA enacted the nation's strictest cellphone policy, forbidding operators not just from using cellphones but from possessing them on the job, with an immediate suspension and recommended dismissal for those caught violating the policy.