Chase Amtrak Crash: 25 Years Later

Even a quarter century later, John and Dawn Kerner have a hard time speaking about the horrors that took place on the railroad tracks just behind their Chase home.

The Kerners were coming home from church on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon—Jan. 4, 1987—when they saw smoke billowing nearby. Then chaos ensued.

At 1:04 p.m., 25 years ago today, Amtrak train 94, the Colonial, slammed into a set of Conrail freight locomotives. In an instant, 16 people were killed and 175 were injured.

In the years since the crash, laws have changed, wounds have healed but the memories of that cold January day are still fresh.

Without thinking twice, John Kerner quickly went inside, changed and darted out to the scene that day along with many of his neighbors to help those in need.

John Kerner helped pull some of the victims to safety and even performed CPR on one victim even before many of the police and emergency medical service providers arrived on the scene.

Dawn Kerner took in many of the victims into their home, offering blankets and the use of their telephone for people to call their loved ones in an age long before cell phones were common.

“It was total chaos,” Dawn Kerner said. “The mangled trains, the people everywhere. It was a sight right out of an action movie, but it was all so real. The images were ones John had a hard time forgetting and even had nightmares for a long time after that.”

Chaos on the Tracks

Investigators concluded that the crash, then the deadliest in Amtrak history, was caused when a Conrail engineer, Ricky Gates, who was under the influence of marijuana, failed to stop at a warning signal.

Gates later went on to serve four years in prison after being charged with 16 counts of vehicular manslaughter, according to court records.

But the cause of the crash meant little to those on the scene in the hours after the crash.

Just ask Donald and Delores Pickle. Today, the Middle River couple are career Baltimore County paramedics. But, back then they were volunteers at Middle River Volunteer Ambulance & Rescue Co.

“I’ve never seen a sight like that before and I hope I never see a sight like that again,” said , 56. “There were just people everywhere.”

Donald Pickle said he assisted with the triage efforts as rescue workers pulled the victims from the wreckage. He evaluated 50 people in the hours after the crash and had another 30 coming for his assistance after that.

Among those he evaluated ranged from a woman with a severely broken leg, who later recovered, to those he had to declare dead at the scene.

“You just had to trust your training and instincts because there was no time to second guess,” he said. “The hardest part was assessing a patient and realizing there was nothing you could do for them before moving on to those you could help.”

Just finding those who needed help at times was a challenge. One of Delores Pickle’s tasks was going door-to-door looking for victims that sought help from neighbors.

“With it being a train crash we had victims from all over the region, so just identifying who was there and where they came from was a challenge,” Delores Pickle said.

Retired Baltimore County paramedic  spent the day of the crash on the scene with Middle River Volunteer Ambulance & Rescue before returning the next day for his shift with the Baltimore County Fire Department.

“Everywhere you looked there were people hurt,” said Kahler, 50. “I just remember it was so cold that day but you didn’t have time to worry about it as your adrenaline just took over. It was total chaos.”

Community Comes Together

Dawn Kerner said neighbors did everything they could to assist the rescue effort, which included a makeshift morgue and an emergency center at

Many residents also brought supplies and offered their services to the dozens of train passengers who ended up at a nearby community center

The community's work was not unnoticed as several Good Samaritans were invited to the White House and recognized by President Ronald Reagan.

“Everyone during that time worked together to help complete strangers,” Dawn  Kerner said. “It was amazing how people didn’t think twice when it came to helping their fellow man.”

Ella Mae Ramer-Vitek lives in West Virginia now, but was a Chase resident at the time of the crash. She said she would never forget what happened on that day and was also proud of her fellow neighbors.

“I remember the sound,” she said. “It was like a bomb went off or a huge plane crash. People were running and didn't know were to run to at the time. It was just unreal chaos with people crying and in shock all over the place … It was a sad day of shock and disbelief.”

Leonard Bayer still lives near the crash site and can still vividly recall the crash. He said he was watching an NFL playoff game when an alert came across the TV screen and then he saw smoke nearby.

Bayer said the neighborhood was basically on lockdown for several days after the crash. No one got in and no one—except emergency personnel— got out. He wasn’t able to get within a half mile of the crash site and spent a lot of time watching the rescue helicopters take off and land at Oliver Beach Elementary.

“We were basically stuck,” he said. “My daughter was at my parents’ house in Dundalk and they couldn’t get back home. It was simply unreal.”

Lessons Learned Through Tragedy

Since the crash, federal regulations now require all trains on the Northeast Corridor to have an automatic stop system. These systems would take control of a train if the operator passes a signal too quickly.

In 1991, Congress passed the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act, in part due to the Chase crash. According to the law, it “requires drug and alcohol testing of ‘safety-sensitive’ transportation employees in aviation, trucking, railroads, mass transit, pipelines, and other transportation industries.”

But the crash also offered a teaching moment for the police and fire units that responded to the scene, especially when it came to communication between units.

Baltimore County police Chief James Johnson was a 24-year-old officer at the time of the crash. He was off that day, but he lived nearby and rode over on his bicycle. He spent the next three days assisting the command staff with coordination.

“The lessons we learned from that incident were immeasurable,” Johnson said. “I knew even back then we needed to work on improving communication and coordination between the various public safety agencies.

"A lot of the communication improvements we have made in the years since stemmed directly from that crash," Johnson added. "The Chase Amtrak crash is an event we study and educate ourselves on whenever we explore disaster preparedness training."

Editor's Note: Donald and Delores Pickle are the parents-in-law of Essex-Middle River editor Ron Snyder.