They're
Angry And They Demand Action
The Independent
11/21/99
By: Ryan Werbeck, Independent Staff Writer
In the blink of
an eye, roughly 25 people from different parts of the country
were suddenly tied together.
Every one of them
has had to deal with a loved one being involved in a collision
with a train. Many have lost a family member as a result.
"We're all
here because we've been touched by this," said Scott
Gauvin, founder of the Illinois-based Coalition for Safer
Crossings. "Just by the fact that we came to Ohio shows
it means something."
People from Virginia,
New York, and even Kansas exchanged hugs and support as they
gathered at the Holiday Inn in Jackson Township to start
working toward a national group that will promote railroad
crossings safety awareness.
According to statistics
from Texas-based RailWatch, a non-profit group that strives
to educate the public about railroad safety, a train accident
occurs every 90 minutes. The death rate from railroad accidents
is unchanged in the last six years.
Gauvin
said he know his involvement was the right thing to do
when he got a letter from a 17-year-old girl asking for
help. "She wanted
to know why here sister wasn't coming home from school." he
said, adding he didn't have any answers for her.
Saturday's conference
came about when Gauvin, a group called Hands-Across-the-Rails
and the Canal Fulton-based Angels on Track Foundation decided
to pool the efforts of groups nationwide to get more results.
"These are
not accidents,"
said Vicky Moore, co-founder of Angels on Track. "These
are collisions that could have been prevented had there been
gates and lights at crossings. When you call it an accident,
it's not pointing blame."
Moore, like everyone
at the conference, has experienced the difficult fight of
getting action taken on the subject of unprotected railroad
crossings.
In 1995, her son
Ryan was killed at a crossing near the Wayne-Stark county
line. Eight months later, gates were put up there.
She was one of the
lucky ones. Some at the conference still are fighting their
battle years after the accident happened.
Becky Garry, who's
daughter was killed four years ago in the Lake County village
of Perry, said she still is waiting for something to be done.
She's been told
that some improvements at the intersection her daughter died
at could happen in January.
"You have to
work before you see a difference," she said, "It
should be a lot easier to get things done."
For some at the
conference, it's been a struggle for years to deal with what
has happened.
Larna White Robbins,
who now lives in Piqua, lost her son Joshua in the same crash
that killed Ryan Moore in 1995. In addition, her daughter
Rebecca was injured in the crash.
She said she still
has all the newspaper articles from the incident in a manila
folder.
They remain in that
folder because it's too hard for her to go through and organize
them.
"I kind of
feel like we've been spinning our wheels here," Moore
said. "But I think we got a lot accomplished."
"The reason
we're here is because nobody cares," she said with tears
in her eyes. "It ticks me off that it takes people like
us to do something. We know this is the right thing to do
and it's going to happen."
To achieve their
goals, the group decided to hold a national conference in
Washington, D.C., next fall and also made progress on organizing
their coalition which most likely will be called the National
RailRoad Safety Coalition. The name reflects the fact that
the coalition isn't concerned with just rail safety, but
also the roads around the tracks. The next steps for the
coalition are to establish a mission statement and bylaws,
plan the national conference and get a Web site up and to
keep everyone in touch.
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