Federal officials say their investigation into a Colorado coal train derailment that killed a truck driver and shut down a major highway is focused on whether inspection and maintenance practices at BNSF Railway contributed to the accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Thursday issued a preliminary report on the Oct. 15 accident.
A steel railroad bridge built in 1958 collapsed onto Interstate 25 after a suspected broken rail caused 30 cars coal to derail. A California truck driver was killed in the derailment.
I-25 is the main north-south route through Colorado and was closed for four days as crews cleared debris from the site.
"Something like a broken rail is usually not easy to miss. So I would suspect that the broken rail happened well after that track inspector went over the tracks," said Joseph Nantista, who spent nearly a decade maintaining and constructing rails in the Denver metro and now serves as the assistant general chairman for the Unified System Division of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (USDBMWED).
Nantista said he doesn't want to see this derailment pinned on employees and their procedures.
"The railroads have absolutely made an effort to do more with less. And as a result of that, like I said, safety is usually what pays for it," he said.
Nantista said there will be trouble on the tracks if rail companies keep making employee cuts industry-wide.
Just this week, Union Pacific announced it's trimming the ranks of the railroad’s management employees to eliminate the amount of people involved in decision making. The railroad, based in Omaha, Nebraska, said Wednesday it is eliminating less than 5% of its roughly 5,600 management jobs.
"Things like we saw in Pueblo are going to start happening more," said Nantista.
On Thursday, the family of LaFollete Henderson, the truck driver killed in the derailment near Pueblo, said in a statement, “Like the NTSB, we are also investigating to find out how and why this senseless tragedy happened. We will have no further comment at this time out of respect for the family as they mourn the loss of their father.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.