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HELENA, Montana (AP) – An Oregon man said he survived a recent train derailment in Montana by holding onto a grab bar in the bathroom of a passenger car that crashed found on its side and separated from the rest of the train.
“I was on the left side (of the wagon) and I was looking at the ground,” Justin Ruddell of Klamath Falls said Thursday. “The outside door opened and the bathroom door, the lock failed for some reason, and it opened on the fly.”
Ruddell said he could see all the gravel and dirt outside picking up in the car as it skidded along the tracks.
“If I had let go, I would have fallen through that door and been run over by the train or crushed into the dirt,” he said.
Ruddell, 40, said he suffered two broken vertebrae, five broken ribs and strained arm muscles “hanging on for life” in the Sept. 25 derailment near Joplin, MT. He said he had hit his head against something and had pain in his jaw that made it difficult to eat. Ruddell spent five days in Kalispell Hospital.
“I have seen death and destruction around me that I can never forget,” he said in a statement.
RELATED | Amtrak Montana derailment victim identified as investigation continues
Ruddell said he had traveled from Oregon to Maine a week earlier with the ashes of a friend who died in 2019. He was in between jobs and had thought of his friend this summer when he decided to do the job. trip.
“I had always promised my friend that he and me were going to go to the east coast,” Ruddell said. “It was one of our goals. Something we’ve talked about a lot and never been able to achieve.
“So I took his ashes that was in a piece of glass that someone made for me on the east coast, and I went into the ocean, and I kept my promise and I saw the Atlantic Ocean with him. We saw it together and we were going home and that’s when this train derailed.
Ruddell was helped out of the wagon, but he refused to get out of the side of the car, which was now up, without his friend’s ashes.
A woman who was on the train remembered where he was sitting and went back inside and grabbed his bag, which contained the ashes, Ruddell said.
Ruddell is one of four passengers who filed lawsuits in Chicago federal court against Amtrak and BNSF Railway on Thursday, saying the companies were negligent in failing to prevent the derailment. The other people filed Thursday were Matt Johnson, 40, of Seattle and Stuart and Karen Dixon, both of Berwyn, Pa., Clifford Law Offices said.
At least a dozen passengers have filed lawsuits for physical and psychological injuries sustained in the derailment. Amtrak and BSNF declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Ruddell said the pain from his injuries was “unbelievable” that he was having trouble sleeping and was unable to work in a mechanic job he was planning to start on his return from travel.
The derailed Amtrak train consisted of two locomotives, a baggage car and nine passenger cars and was carrying nearly 160 people. Three people died and at least seven others were injured enough to require hospitalization.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the derailment.
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