CSUN University News Clippings

Photo by Karen Quincy Loberg

Bea Watts shows the scar from the emergency surgery to her kidneys, liver, and spleen performed hours after being in the Metrolink crash last year. Watts was hospitalized until October and still hangs some of the posters in her house made for her homecoming.

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In the weeks after last year’s Metrolink crash, as Luis Cruz lay in bed recovering from a long list of injuries he suffered in the wreck, he thought he’d recuperate in a few months and life would return to normal.

He’d go back to running his trucking business, which provided a good income and the freedom of being his own boss. He’d work on paying off his mortgage, practice volleyball with his three children, and be the one his family could depend on.

Cruz is still waiting for that sense of normalcy to return.

“A year later and I’m still in pain and still losing things,” said Cruz, 43, of Thousand Oaks.

He lost his truck after a colleague took advantage of him, and his house to the bank that expected payments even when he wasn’t making any money. And he lost his sense of place in the family, and the ability to move forward while living in constant pain from the massive internal injuries he suffered.

“I used to take control,” he said. “Now I am stuck.”

Although many of the 135 people injured in the crash, which killed 25 others, have healed, in many ways their wounds are still raw. Some feel as though a part of themselves is gone, replaced by a fear of the unknown and a sense of forboding whenever they hear a train’s horn in the distance.

The images of splintered metal and broken bodies haunt their sleep. Some feel guilt from walking away from a crash that ended so many lives. Others are trying to figure out how to live with a new identity scarred by the accident. Post-traumatic stress disorder, often thought of as only a problem for war veterans, is common among the crash survivors.

“They are getting physically healed, but emotionally they are just beginning to conceptualize the world in a whole new way,” said Beth Haynes, a psychologist who runs a weekly support group for survivors of the crash and people who lost loved ones. “I don’t think anyone could go through a traumatic incident like we are talking about and not become a different person.”

Bea Watts is struggling with how to become that new person.

“I try to be my old self, but I can’t,” said Watts.

In her darker moments, she wonders if it wouldn’t have been easier to have died in the crash instead of living with a constant sense of dread and vivid memories of being thrown down the train’s aisle. “I feel robbed. I don’t know if I can get the old Bea back, but I’m trying.”

Watts, 42, of Simi Valley, used to be the ultimate PTA mom, organizing events for her three children, running her daughter’s Girl Scout troop and juggling as many activities as possible.

On Sept. 12, 2008, she was sitting at a table on the train, coming home from her job at CSU Northridge, when the Metrolink commuter train collided head-on with a freight train, sending her through the air. As seats flew by her, she thought of how she had told her kids to tuck their heads when practicing tumbling, so she did it, too. She felt her neck snap and could tell something was seriously wrong with her intestines.

When the train stopped, over the din of moans all around her, she called her husband, telling him she thought she was going to die.

“I love you; tell the kids I love them,” she remembers saying.

Over the next month in the hospital, during four surgeries, doctors removed most of her pancreas, all of her spleen, repaired her lacerated liver and kidneys, fixed an aneurysm in her neck and worked on her fractured vertebrae. After about six months, her body began to recover, but her spirit had a long way to go.

“A lot of people tell me I look great, but it’s all on the inside,” she said of the pain.

It took her months to get into a car, for fear that someone would run into her. When she goes to a new place, she scouts out the exit signs in case she needs to escape. She became afraid of the dark, sleeping with a night light on and not going into a room unless it was lighted.

A few months ago, she mustered the courage to go to Disneyland for her daughter’s birthday, even though the crowds frightened her to the core. The day was going well until she went on the innocent “it’s a small world” ride designed for small children. When one of the other boats slightly bumped hers, she screamed, and the fear of crashing came rushing back.

“It took me four days to get over it,” she said.

Although she sees slight signs of improvement, her therapist told her it could take some time before she’s regained the life she once loved. “It seems like so much work to reinvent yourself at 42,” she said. Even some of those not critically injured in the crash are still grappling with the trauma of seeing so much death and destruction that day.

Kipp Landis has flashbacks of the severed arm laying across him that he thought was his.

“It was difficult to sleep for months, but it’s harder to be awake,” said the Moorpark lawyer.

He feels guilt and sadness that he can’t be the father to his children he once was, playing catch with his son and coaching his Little League games. He thinks the splints on his shattered hand are a constant reminder to his family of the pain they endure daily as they all learn how to adjust to the new person he’s become.

Brandon Gray, 32, still has back problems from the crash, but it’s the mental anguish that gives him constant problems.

“The significant pain has dissipated, but the emotional impact has lasted,” he said.

He bought his Moorpark home a few years ago because it was close to the train station, which made the daily commute to his job as a vice president in a downtown Los Angeles investment firm that much easier.

Now he hates the proximity to the tracks that stir memories of blood, screaming and an indescribable smell he can’t shake. He used to sleep with his windows open but now keeps them shut so the sound of the train doesn’t put him in a cold sweat and keep him awake. He drives 15 minutes out of the way to work every day, just so he won’t have to cross the railroad tracks.

A few weeks ago, Arnie Peterson was driving to Palm Springs and saw a long line of trains. Almost instantly he was back to the day of the crash, seeing so much carnage and trying to figure out a way past the broken bodies to safety.

“It surprised me how that took me back and made me feel uncomfortable,” said Peterson, 49, of Simi Valley. “The best word that describes it is vulnerable. I don’t feel safe.”

Mike Harvey, 54, of Thousand Oaks, has many of the same problems and is seeing a therapist. Why did he survive and so many others died? Why did this have to happen to people being good citizens by easing traffic congestion? Why wasn’t this preventable accident prevented? What does he say to widows whose husbands died on the train? And now that he’s lived through this awful experience, what is he supposed to take away from it?

“I’m not sure why, and maybe there is no reason,” he said.

The Rev. Donald Ashman lived through it, giving last rites to the dead and saying prayers for the many people he saw so badly hurt. But a year later, he’s OK with the experience.

Although he hated seeing the pain and suffering, he also saw the goodness of people in the midst of tragedy.

“I am saddened by what happened,” said Ashman, of Thousand Oaks. “But if there was a beautiful chord, it was the way people were heroes on that day and came to the aid of their brothers and sisters.”

He doesn’t remember the images of suffering as much as those of the sheriff’s deputy who helped three people off the train before collapsing himself. He thinks of all the firefighters who worked for hours to cut survivors and the dead out of the wreckage. He remembers the neighbors who rushed from their Chatsworth homes to put compresses on bleeding heads and offer water to dazed commuters.

“If you want an affirmation of human goodness,” he said, “it was there.”