Chehalis pair survive wreck with passenger train

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Two people escaped with only minor injuries when their small pickup truck collided with an Amtrak train in Centralia this afternoon.

Firefighters and police responding about 3:45 p.m. to the crossing on Summa Street near South Tower Avenue found the vehicle on its driver’s side, having struck the signal pole on the west side of the tracks.

“I’ve heard a lot of wrecks here, but nothing like this,” Centralia resident Ken Peck said.

Peck said he was outside his home a block away talking with a buddy and the sound of the impact was thunderous. He looked over and saw a pickup flipping through the air, he said.

“The train literally lifted it up and it did a twist like that,” Peck said as he described the path of the older Datsun pickup moving his hands over his head in an arc.

Centralia Police Department Officer Patricia Finch said the female driver failed to stop for the crossing arms.

The driver, a 40-year-old Chehalis woman, was headed east across Summa and hit by the southbound train, according to Finch.

“A BNSF train had just passed in the other direction, to my understanding,” Finch said.

The male passenger got himself out, and he along with bystanders helped the woman out of the truck, according to Finch.

“I thought she was dead, her arms were hanging out the window,” Peck said. But she wasn’t.

Peck said they tried to sit the couple down away from the tracks, but the man left.

Police located him a few blocks to the north, and learned he was wanted on two outstanding warrants. The 54-year-old Chehalis man was taken to the hospital by a police officer to be checked out, before he could be booked into jail, according to Finch.

The driver was transported by ambulance to Providence Centralia Hospital as well.

Finch said the 1984 Datsun pickup was totaled, with most of its damage to the front on the driver’s side.

Rail traffic was stopped for at least 45 minutes. BNSF is conducting its own investigation, Finch said.

Peck said it’s a crossing that needs more safety features to prevent drivers who seem to often try to beat the trains.

He got the impression the woman waited for the freight train to pass northbound, but was impatient for the crossing arms to rise, and drove around them.

“Even when she got out of the truck, she was saying, ‘I didn’t see the Amtrak’,” he said.