_ENFORCEMENT - M1978352 ‎(11)‎

• Permit No: M1978352
• IBM Index Class Name: Enforcement
• Doc Name: AFFIDAVIT OF MARK A HEIFNER 79-CV-1633
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

j about 40 miles an hour. We had our people go out there and
2 check and they estimate that visibility for an engineer is
3 about 1/3 of a mile as it comes around the curve in that
4 particular area. Now if one of our trains was approaching
5 this crossing and one of these trucks was trying to get
6 across this particular crossing, we could throw on our brakes,
7 our air, and we' d never stop in time. There could be a
8 serious accident and I think this one thing that you gentle-
9 men should consider is the impact that say that derailment
10 could have here both to life, both to the ecology, and the
11 environment, if such a thing would occur. Now sometimes
12 diesel locomotives, themselves, carry, on the average, say it
13 was a long train, as much as ten thousand gallons of diesel
14 fuel in those engines. If they were in that area and they
15 were loaded at Pueblo or Salt Lake , they might have 5 to 6
16 thousand gallons which if an accident would occur the tanks
17 would burst it could be spurt out into the environment. Into
18 the Eagle River as far as that goes and I think you can go up
19 from there as to what could happen. There' s also the impact
20 that it could have on the lives of our engineers, lives of
21 the truck drivers and so on. Now we did upgrade this cross-
22 ing because these trucks were going across and we were afraid
23 that our rails would be actually torn apart. There was an
24 actual occurrence from where one of the trucks pulling off
25 the highway into this area here about a year ago got hung up
26 on the track and one of our track people, I think it was the
27 track supervisor, came along in time. Luckily there was no
28 accident that occurred but they did have to stop the train.
29 I know that they have said well, Eagle County has suggested,
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