BUCKLAND — On an icy Sunday morning, a week before Christmas, Timothy Bohonowicz was driving to Neighbor’s convenience store in the family’s 2006 Honda Pilot. It was 6:40 a.m. — not really light enough to see the twisted track and crumpled asphalt on the Elm Street railroad crossing on the hilly roadway ahead.
“Pan Am (Railways) had trucks out there, but that was normal,” he said. “They always seem to have trucks out there. Then I went over the crossing and the truck was launched: the front end went up, the back end followed. I had my seat belt on, but was still tossed around.”
Bohonowicz, an electrician, ended up with a concussion and has been out of work ever since. As he goes to doctor’s visits and deals with ongoing symptoms of the injury, he questions the railroad procedures that made it possible for him to “slip through the cracks” of safety.
“Speaking as a resident, I hope they get a system in place where (Fire Chief) Herb Guyette can find out what happened, other than on Facebook,” Bohonowicz said. “Whose responsibility was it to close that crossing?”
The Dec. 18 train derailment of four grain cars occurred around 2:40 a.m., but State Police first learned of the derailment around 5:50 a.m., and the town’s police chief was told at about 6:15. Shelburne Falls Fire Chief Rick Bardwell learned about it at 7:40 a.m., because one of the department’s firefighters happened to live near the tracks. The damaged Ashfield Street railroad crossing was already closed when Bohonowicz went over the damaged crossing on Elm Street.
Guyette learned of the derailment in his town through a Facebook posting.
Bohonowicz said a photo of the track showed an upright, torn piece of asphalt that may have acted like a ramp for the trajectory of one side of the vehicle, while the other side sunk down in the tracks. His airbags didn’t deploy — which was lucky, he said, because Nancy Parland was walking her dog on the other side of the tracks, where he stopped his vehicle.
When Bohonowicz asked her “What happened?” she told him there was a train derailment.
Bohonowicz says he isn’t sure how he got the concussion. He said staff at the Concussion Center of Massachusetts in Hadley believe he may have gotten it from whiplash. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I don’t believe I hit the roof of the vehicle. The pain in my head is more front and back of my head.”
Bohonowicz has been out of work for five weeks now, and is being treated in the Concussion Center. He said he still has tinnitus, tremors and headaches.
Right after hitting the railroad crossing, Bohonowicz drove to Lamson & Goodnow, and pulled off the road. “I was a little dazed.” Bohonowicz said he called dispatch, who transferred him to state police. When he told them about the crossing, they told him the Conway Street crossing was open.
“The roads were glare ice,” he said. “I wasn’t going to call an ambulance. I just wanted to sit down and and relax.”
Heading home, Bohonowicz saw Parland’s husband, Steve Howland, taking photographs of the derailment and track, around 7:10. Bohonowicz asked Howland to call someone, to set up a road barricade.
Howland said Wednesday that he talked to the workers near the track and was told they couldn’t lower the railroad crossing gates until they got word from the dispatcher in the Deerfield railyard.
“The police were there at the Ashfield crossing, but not at Elm Street,” Howland said.
Bohonowicz is concerned about whether the concussion tests and treatment are covered by his health insurance. He said he has contacted his car insurance company to see if his personal injury protection could cover this.
For now, he said, he can’t work as an electrician, and is ineligible for unemployment — because this is a medical disability. “I have three kids,” he said. “So my goal is to get healthy as soon as possible and get back to work.”
Bohonowicz said he hasn’t tried to contact Pan Am about his injuries, but he has consulted a lawyer.
“This is all new to me,” he said. “All this takes reading and research. And the first thing they tell you (with a concussion) is stay off the computer and the telephone.”
“My symptoms aren’t getting better,” he said. “I’m shaken.”