Nineteen-year-olds were sitting on the bridge over Ellicott City with their backs to the Historic District just after midnight on Tuesday when an 80-car CSX freight train passed behind them.
. Nass and Mayr were buried in coal, according to Howard County Police, and the two friends died of “compressional asphyxia;” they suffocated.
The next day, Gina Rower brought three of her kids to a where they placed roses and tied ribbons to commemorate the two young women who died.
When asked about the prevalence of kids on the tracks, Rower scrunched her face.
“I don’t know," she said, "Is it bad to say ‘I’d go back up there?' ... It is what it is.”
Rower is not a teenager; this wasn’t a case of ‘kids will be kids.’ She noted that if you look up Ellicott City hiking trails online, “a lot of them go right on the tracks.”
The bridge where Mayr and Nass sat is property of CSX. When asked if the girls were “trespassing,” CSX spokesman Gary Sease would not comment.
“Certainly that’s our property,” he said in an unrelated conversation, “And our jurisdiction.”
Trespassing or not, kids hanging out on the tracks is nothing new.
“I’ve lived here 42 years, and I used to go up there all the time,” said Mickey McDaniel.
“We used to put pennies up there on the tracks so the trains could flatten them,” he said. And when he got to be a little older – about the age of Mayr and Nass – “We would sit there and drink.”
A Twitter user named Elizabeth Nass (@LizNassty) tweeted at 10:40 p.m. Monday night that she was “,” which sits under the train tracks that cross Main Street, with @r0se_petals, a Twitter user named Rose Mayr.
McDaniel and his wife, Tina McDaniel, had been sitting in their car in the parking lot where seven or eight of the train cars fell, burying vehicles in coal.
“We were sitting in our car in the lot talking at about 8 p.m.,” he said. “Imagine if we had been a few hours later,” she added.
Keeping people off of the tracks is no easy feat
“Of course, the U.S. rail system was built to maximize access for shippers and farmers and anyone who wanted to ship goods on the railroad,” Sease said. Maintaining that access while maximizing safety is a delicate balancing act for CSX officials and local public safety authorities.
At a press conference Wednesday, County Executive Ken Ulman said that at that point, his first priority was as a key road into the shopping district – Main Street – was closed at the Baltimore County line.
“My biggest concern overall,” he said Wednesday afternoon, “is just getting this place back open. After that happens … if there are ways that we can do a better job in the future, that’s what we need to look at."
Later that afternoon he met with Howard County Police and CSX officials, according to Sease. They talked about “all the major topics of concerns: street closures, lengths of time and then the community concerns that we’ve been dealing with.”
What do you think can be done to keep people off the tracks? Tell us in the comments.
County Councilperson Courtney Watson, whose district includes Main Street, said that the county will have to review issues of access to the tracks and determine whether it meets CSX’s standards for safety.
But she echoed what many Ellicott City residents have said in the community discussion following the derailment. “The reality is that if people want to get on the tracks, they’re going to be able to do it.” The county also needs to educate people – particularly kids, she said – that railways are not a safe place to be.
It comes as no surprise, however, that safety does not seem to be the top priority for kids hanging on the tracks.
Teenagers have always gone to the tracks, which meander through a densly wooded area along the Patapsco River, for drugs, drinking, sex; “The whole nine yards,” according to Brittany Swec. The 21-year-old graduated from one year before Nass and Mayr, and spoke with Patch at a held at the high school Tuesday night.
When asked if the deaths would stop kids from hanging out near the tracks, Swec, standing with her parents, didn’t miss a beat.
“No. Not at all.”
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CSX Corp.’s CEO Michael Ward was among executives that saved the most due to the Bush-era tax cuts, according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. The Institute’s study focused on companies in the U.S. that pay their CEOs more than they pay in taxes. Jacksonville-based CSX did not make that list, but it did make the list for specific executives that saved the most because of the tax cuts for those with incomes above $250,000. Ward’s taxable compensation in 2011 was $28.3 million and he saves $1.29 million due to the tax cuts, according to the study.
As for noticing the girls, well, read more coverage and put the pieces together. I can't really explain it without being tasteless and gruesome.
I've read articles on train killings for 14 years and KNOW the railroads wouldn't blink an eye moving victims to make the settlement cheaper.
As Mickey McDaniel implied, he and his wife would likely have died if they had been in the parking lot when the train derailed. Unless we plan to fence off everything within 100 feet of any train tracks, I don't think there's a lot that can be done. I hope CSX will put policies in place to prevent future derailments. I worry about something more toxic than coal getting spilled all over Main Street. Another thought: if the drinking age were still 18, Nass and Mayr would have been drinking in a nice safe pub instead of on the railroad bridge.
I would also like to say that, in my opinion, it is innocent fun. I can't understand peoples focus on the minor technicality that these girls were trespassing and/or drinking under age (that is innocent fun for a legal adult who is capable of understanding the risks of their behavior). They had nothing to do with the derailment, and if they were sober and standing in lot B, the outcome would have been the same. The focus shouldn't be on keeping people away from the tracks, but on preventing future accidents.
Hmmmm Busted --- Speeding train ---un-cut right of ways ---no restriction signs. You lawyers suing CSX in this one should have no problem making the worms squirm. No way the train crew could have seen anyone here doing the train coming the other way thing.
The YouTube video of a CSX train at the EC station (in the above comment) may have been filmed from public property, but, personally, there is no way I would stand that close to a moving train. To this day, I purposely stop well short of the crossing gate if I'm first in line at a grade crossing, I stay well away from the edge of the track as a train passes if I'm hiking in Patapsco State Park, and I don't allow my family to sit at the Harper's Ferry passenger station as a train passes, even though it is perfectly legal to do so and even though I see many other people (including families with kids) doing it. A train is the only mode of transportation that is easy to avoid: it travels on a fixed path; it can't steer into you. You're probably safer standing next to a track than sitting in your broken down car on the shoulder of I-95. However, I choose to not increase my risk exposure by placing myself unnecessarily close to the track. One in a million happens every day, as we unfortunately witnessed in this accident.
The film at the end also shows CSX hasn't trimmed the brush in years and the train crew couldn't see nothing approaching the bridge. WHO knew the girls where there? WHY didn't the coal knock the girls off the ledge that any computer simulation would prove would have been what happened? So where is the slow order through this museum since things that could be dangling off the sides of rail cars (like steel strapping that came loose), which can be as deadly to passerby as a derailment. At all passenger stations with platforms 6 inches out of the kill zone the freight trains fly through?
If they moved the victims, they moved them to a pretty stupid place, as the current evidence at least suggests the railroad is at fault. Sure the analysis isn't in, but the girls were found sitting away from the tracks, and no part of the train ever touched them, just the coal. The operators never saw them, and the train automatically triggered its brakes due to some kind of fault or derailment. This entirely suggests the girls had nothing to do with the derailment. Either track issues derailed the train, triggering the brakes, or a brake line failed, triggering the brakes and eventually the derailment. The exact cause unknown until NTSB is done, but it's pretty obvious so far that the train would have derailed without them anywhere nearby. If they were trying to cover things up, they did a patently stupid job of it.
The cops wouldn't have a clue on what was top of a bridge 20 feet above their heads unless they had special x-ray eyes. Now girls killed on bridge ---railroad bridge vs. girls killed in public parking lot ---MILLIONS difference. Ask Canadian National Railway Company how much people killed OFF railroad property costs in a derailment.