BHP ground crew applied emergency handbrakes to wrong train: ATSB report

A ground crew mistakenly applied emergency brakes to the wrong train in the lead-up to the costly disaster, says ATSB report.

Fresh details around last year’s spectacular derailment of a BHP iron ore train have revealed that a BHP ground crew was mistakenly applying emergency handbrakes to the wrong train in the lead-up to the disaster.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau this morning released its preliminary report into the disaster, which started when a fully laden ore train came to an automatic stop after a loss of communication between the locomotive and the carriages.

The ATSB said this morning that a ground crew arrived to help 30 minutes later and started manually applying handbrakes to ensure the train could not roll away. However, the ATSB revealed that the ground crew instead applied the brakes on an empty ore train stopped next to the stricken train.

The stricken train then started to roll away, reaching a top speed of 162km an hour before derailing at 144km an hour. The accident destroyed two locomotives, 245 ore cars and two kilometres of track.

But BHP defended the contribution of the ground crew to the disaster, noting that the crew was only on the ground for ten minutes before the train started to roll away and had insufficient time to manually apply brakes to all the train’s wagons. That process can take hours.

“Even if the track support team had have attended the correct train and applied manual brakes it would not have been enough to stop the rollway event,” a spokeswoman for BHP said

The disaster saw BHP lose about 4 million tonnes of iron ore production, equating to around $US280 million in lost revenue.

The driver of the train, South Australian man Peter Frick, was sacked by BHP late last year. The driver and BHP recently reached a settlement before a scheduled appearance before the Fair Work Commission.

The president of BHP’s WA iron ore operations, Edgar Basto, said the ATSB investigation supported BHP’s own earlier findings that procedural noncompliance by the driver caused the accident.

“Prior to exiting the cabin of the lead locomotive the driver did not apply the Automatic Brake Handle to the emergency position as required in the operating procedure and in accordance with training provided,” Mr Basto said.

“If the Automatic Brake Handle was in the emergency position as per the operating procedure, the train would not have rolled away.”