History's A Disaster
Bloody history and bloodier crimes. Andrew takes a weekly look at all things bloody. From natural disasters to man made atrocities
History's A Disaster
The 1999 Bourbonnais Amtrak disaster
A semi-truck ignores flashing warning lights. An Amtrak train barrels forward at 79 miles per hour. Eleven lives are lost in the devastating collision that follows. The 1999 Bourbonnais Amtrak disaster stands as a sobering reminder of how quickly tragedy can unfold when safety protocols fail.
The catastrophe began with truck driver John Stokes, who after a long day hauling steel, approached a railroad crossing in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Despite active warning signals, he attempted to accelerate across the tracks rather than risk stopping. Meanwhile, Amtrak's City of New Orleans train #59 was approaching with 207 passengers and 21 crew members. The impact was devastating – destroying the semi-trailer, scattering a 37,000-pound load of steel rebar, and causing 11 of the train's 14 cars to derail.
What unfolded next was both horrific and heroic. As flames engulfed parts of the wreckage on a frigid March night, emergency responders from multiple agencies converged on the scene. Perhaps most remarkably, 35 employees from the nearby Birmingham Steel plant rushed to help before firefighters fully deployed, cutting through fences and risking their lives to pull passengers from the wreckage. Their selfless actions alongside the coordinated emergency response undoubtedly saved many lives, though tragically, eleven passengers perished.
The investigation revealed troubling factors that contributed to the disaster. Stokes had falsified his logbooks to conceal excessive driving hours and fatigue likely impaired his judgment. His employer, Melco Transfer, had previously been cited for safety violations. The disaster prompted changes – the dangerous crossing was permanently closed, and Stokes eventually served prison time for his violations.
Listen to this gripping account of the Bourbonnais Amtrak crash to understand the cascade of decisions and circumstances that led to disaster, and the heroic efforts that prevented an even greater tragedy. Share this episode with others who appreciate stories of real-world events that combine human error, emergency response, and the lasting impact of split-second decisions.
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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/
Train rides are fun, right. Zooming down the track at roughly 80 miles per hour, you get to see the sights you would not normally see driving down the highway, and maybe you can grab a snack from the food car or catch a nap in the sleeper. Sounds like fun, right? Well, that is until there's a semi stopped in the middle of the tracks and it's way too late for the train to come to a full stop. And that's exactly what happened on the night of March 15th 1999. A truck driver ignored the railroad crossing lights and attempted to cross while there was a train coming. The Amtrak could not stop in time. In the ensuing collision, 11 of the 14 cars derailed. So what happened?
Speaker 1:I'm Andrew and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we are taking a trip to Bourbonna, illinois, and looking into a deadly Amtrak collision, and this is a little bit of a trip down memory lane for me. I lived not that far from where the crash happened. I knew most or part of the story of what happened, along with some rumors and whatnot that went with it, along with some rumors and whatnot that went with it, and decided to dig into it to find out some of the truth about what misconceptions I had you know shit like. The truck driver was an immigrant and only got his license from the George Ryan pay-to-play scandal, neither of which was not true at all. John Stokes was born in Michigan in 1940 and was 58 at the time of the accident and had been driving trucks for several years. Most recently he had been driving for Melco Transfer out of Piatone, illinois, which had also been cited multiple times for safety violations. So no surprises there. And while he did have problems with his license, it had nothing to do with the George Ryan scandal. At the time of the accident he was driving on a 60-day probationary license, since his CDL had been suspended for three violations within a year, despite what he wrote in his logbook.
Speaker 1:March 15th was a long day of driving for John Stokes. He delivered a load of steel from Birmingham Steel in Bourbonnet, illinois, to Dayton, ohio. On his way back he picked up a load of lift trucks from Princeton Products in Canal Winchester, ohio, for delivery to Country Supply in Piatone, illinois. Now Melco Transfer says they knew nothing about this load coming back, which sounds pretty convenient for them and also a little bit of bullshit. Melco Transfer had previously owned Country Supply until 1997 and still maintained a business relationship with them. Country Supply often used Melco for loads from Princeton Supply and surprise, surprise, all billing information for this extra load no longer exists.
Speaker 1:Anyways, after dropping this load off in Piatone, stokes returned to Birmingham Steel in Bourbonnais for his third trip of the day. There he picked up a load of 60-foot long rebar weighing over 37,000 pounds. After he was loaded up he secured the load and left the steel plant. Turning right onto McKnight Road, he was now a little over 600 feet away from the railroad grade crossing. That crossing had the flashing lights and the bells and the gate arms, so it's pretty hard not to see when they're going, especially at night.
Speaker 1:Separate from this, up in Chicago, amtrak 59, the City of New Orleans train was getting ready to roll. The crew had all got there by 7.15 that night. The engineer went about his pre-trip inspections while the rest of the crew made ready for their passengers and got the train ready for departure. During his checks the engineer reported the air brakes worked properly and the headlight and ditch lights were in working order. Now, those ditch lights, those are the two little lights at the bottom of the train and they're there just to make the train more visible. And as was the case with Amtrak 59, when coming up to a crossing, these ditch lights would flash in blink when they honked the train horn, therefore increasing visibility. On their way to the first stop in Homewood, no problems with the brakes or lights were recorded. The train departed at nearly 9 30 at night. It was on schedule and traveled south with a crew of 21 and 207 passengers on its way to New Orleans in its doom.
Speaker 1:According to Stokes, as he approached the railroad crossing, the crossing lights did not activate until he was nearly on top of the tracks and he was unaware of the position of the gate arms. Amtrak 59 was getting closer and had activated the crossing lights. Stokes claimed there was a fear if he slammed on the brakes, the load of rebar would shift forward and strike the cab of the truck and damage it. And if he braked, normally he'd just end up stopping on the tracks right in front of the path of the Amtrak hurtling towards him at 79 miles per hour. So what else could he possibly do but put pedal to the metal and floor it? He got the truck into 6th gear and up to 20 miles per hour. As he crossed the tracks he looked left and right down the track and believed the train was far enough down the track to make it. He was wrong. Enough down the track to make it. He was wrong.
Speaker 1:The engineer in Amtrak 59, who was the only one in the cab at the time, saw the truck on the tracks and sounded the horn. Fearing the truck would not clear the tracks, he initiated emergency braking. Unfortunately, traveling at 79 miles per hour, there was not enough distance to stop the train in time. At 9.47, the train smashed into the left rear end of the trailer. The semi-trailer was destroyed, scattering its load of rebar across the area. The two locomotives, along with 11 of the train's 14 cars, derailed. Two freight cars sitting on a neighboring line were struck and destroyed.
Speaker 1:The derailment happened just outside of the Birmingham steel plant. The conductor was walking through the coach car behind the diner when he heard the train's brake supply and felt the bump. He felt the train accelerate and then the car rolled over on its side. The conductor helped the passenger remove a window and climbed outside. Once outside he called the assistant conductor and the engineer by radio. When the engineer said that he was trapped in the locomotive, the assistant conductor volunteered to go help him. The conductor remained at the coach and helped passengers evacuate.
Speaker 1:Within a minute of the crash the Kankakee County Sheriff's Dispatch got the first calls for help from the Birmingham Steel Security Office. More calls would come in and Bourbonnet firefighters were sent out. Within five minutes a Bourbonnet and Bradley police officer would arrive on scene, taking in the carnage and growing fire. They would immediately request more help and went straight into rescuing passengers. Soon more cops would show up and begin to help the evacuation. The Kankakee County disaster plan was put into effect. As the first cops arrived on the scene, the Bourbonnet Police Department set up a staging area on an unpaved road on the west side of the tracks next to where the train derailed. The passengers and train crew were taken here to wait for medical personnel While out on another call.
Speaker 1:The Bourbonnet Fire Department Chief received word of the wreck On the way there. He listened to the reports coming in over the radio. As incident commander he made the call to summon emergency equipment and personnel. Once he got there he assessed the situation and identified the fire and the need to get everyone the fuck out of there. Shortly after 10 o'clock he called for additional mutual aid emergency response support. Afterwards he established a fire department field command post near the initial staging area.
Speaker 1:Emergency responders' immediate focus was getting the trapped and injured passengers and train crew out. One of the first things they did was call Amtrak's National Operations Center to learn how many passengers were on the train At this time. Amtrak responded that the train could be carrying as many as 400 passengers. When Amtrak management arrived on scene, however, they determined that the passenger count was 196, and they weren't even sure if that was right. It would take several days to get the passenger count of 198, and another several days before Amtrak could produce a complete list of passenger names, because obviously they have great record keeping over at Amtrak, especially when it would be a few more days before they finally got to the right count of 207 passengers.
Speaker 1:Anyways, by 10, the first ambulances arrived at the scene. Bourbonnais Fire Department Squad 62 also arrived. The Squad 62 truck held 500 gallons of water along with five gallon fire suppression foam containers. Firefighters began hitting the burning train with water and foam, but they were unable to put out the fire before they ran out of water. Bourbonnet Fire Department Engine 61, a pumper truck carrying about 2,000 feet of hose, arrived at a hydrant about 2,600 feet from the site. Firefighters pulled out the full length of the hose and stretched it as close as they could to the train wreck. A second pumper truck would arrive with more hoses that would be laid out along the unpaved road and charged up and ready to supply water at the west side of the site.
Speaker 1:When the firefighters finally made it to the fire, they saw that 35 employees of Birmingham Steel had beat them to the scene and had begun the rescue effort. These steel plant guys had cut a hole in the chain link fence separating the wreck from the steel plant's property and had brought a number of handheld fire extinguishers and ladders from the plant to combat the flames. While some of the steel plant guys applied the fire extinguishers to the flames, others were going in and out of the derailed cars, pulling passengers from the wreck. They kept it up for 45 minutes before being relieved by the firefighters, who continued the rescue effort and spraying down the fire. Since the McKnight Road crossing was blocked, they had to set up three separate staging areas. The first was the one on the unpaid road near the wreckage pileup. A second fire department command post was set up at the southeast corner of McKnight Road and Route 50 at an empty lumber yard and was called the East Staging Area. A police department command post was set up shortly after at the northeast corner of the same intersection.
Speaker 1:At the northeast corner of the same intersection, at 10.30, incident Command issued a radio request to responding agencies seeking fire suppression foam. Several units responded, but each only had a small number of 5-gallon containers of foam and systems designed to mix the foam with water for use on the fire During the rescue efforts. Once pulled out, passengers and train crew were taken to one of two triage areas set up nearby. Because the temperature that night was in the low 20s, however, the incident commander became concerned about the threat of hypothermia. Since most of them lacked warm clothing, a nearby store stepped up and offered its store as a temporary shelter. First responders would use it both as a shelter and as a triage site for several of the injured. A call was also put out for a medical trauma team consisting of physicians and medical equipment from local hospitals to rush to the scene. Equipment from local hospitals to rush to the scene.
Speaker 1:Police officers were pulling passengers through the emergency exit windows of an overturned coach car. A Manteno Fire Department pumper truck emptied its water tank by supplying a stream of water to the top of this car in an effort to cool it. However, manteno firefighters would have to make a radio request to command that water be applied to the top of the train because they were out. Unfortunately, command on the western side of the pileup mistook the request, thinking it came from personnel inside sleeper car 32035, and they responded with a large stream of water onto the west end of that car. Continuing attempts were made to set up a hydrant flow to resupply the Mantino fire trucks on the east side of the scene. The Braidwood Fire Department heavy rescue truck, having arrived at the east side staging area, was sent back over to the west side. The requested trauma team would follow shortly behind them into the west side staging area.
Speaker 1:Mike Shorkey, who was both a Braidwood firefighter and an emergency response coordinator for a chemical company in Elwood, recognized that the fire suppression foam at the scene was almost out. He also realized that the firefighting efforts had not been working on the locomotive fire. The fire was petroleum-based and it remained trapped within the upper confines of the locomotive car body wreckage. He believed the strategy being used up to that point was having only limited success because the fire would go out in one location only to start back up in another location and then bounce back to the original. Shorky figured what they needed was a shit ton of foam to lay down on the fire and for that a heavy foam tanker truck from the nearest available place should be called in. After getting approval from command, shorkey immediately placed a call asking that a heavy tanker truck and personnel from the Stepan Chemical Company in Elwood be sent out to the accident. He would also make a similar call to the Mobile Oil Refinery. Both of these places are about 35 miles away and would take nearly 45 minutes to arrive.
Speaker 1:At 10 45, a call went out over the radio requesting that the Chicago Combined Agency Response Team immediately respond to the east side of the wreck because two people were trapped inside a car and the fire was blocking rescue attempts. This car team is a tactical rescue squad composed of fire and rescue departments across the Chicagoland area. When the Braidwood Fire Department heavy rescue truck arrived at the west side staging area, it was set up as another field command post. In desperate need for more water, command issued a call to all responding agencies for all available water tanker truck support. By 11 pm they had the east side fire under control Not out. But almost by 11 30, the heavy foam tanker truck from Stepan Chemical Company showed up and quickly got set up and working.
Speaker 1:The west side fire. Mike Shorkey organized the Stepan response. They sprayed down the locomotive and the burning sleeper car with water and foam. It would not take them long before they had the fire completely put down and to prevent the possibility of the fire starting back up again, they kept on hosing down the hot metal in the wreckage. Just to be sure, by 12.05, an emergency shelter established at a nearby school building began to receive the uninjured passengers who were transferred from the temporary shelter established at the store. This shelter, staffed by the American Red Cross and the Bourbonnet Police Department, would remain open until 2 30 am. The firefighters on hand continued to fight small fires that kept popping up throughout the night before finally putting it out for good by dawn on the 16th.
Speaker 1:Out of the 207 passengers 17 on-duty Amtrak crew members and four off-duty Amtrak and railroad personnel 121 of them were taken to local hospitals for medical treatment. 35 of them were examined and released without receiving medical treatment. One of the trained crew members would have to be airlifted from Provena St Mary's Hospital to the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago. John Stokes, a firefighter and a sheriff's deputy, received minor injuries and were quickly treated and released from a local hospital. 11 passengers all from sleeping car 32035, died from their injuries.
Speaker 1:Shortly after the accident, safety board investigators compiled the activities of Stokes for the 72-hour period before the accident, using his own statements, his logbook and materials from the Illinois State Police investigation. The initial findings indicated that Stokes had been driving for about 10 hours and had been on duty for another two hours in the 24-hour period before the accident. However, during the accident investigation, investigators discovered a fuel receipt that contradicted his accounts of his whereabouts on the day before, and when confronted with the evidence, stokes changed his story real quick. The truth was finally coming out In the few days prior to the accident. He had slept only a few hours and was on the road. More than anything, stokes would not end up being charged with a grade crossing violation. Following the accident, however, the federal office of motor carrier Safety conducted a compliance review of Melco Transfer Inc. That would result in fines for both the company and for Stokes. They would also decide not to pursue the case further, but instead turn the case over to the DOT's Office of the Inspector General who conducted a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the accident.
Speaker 1:In October of 2001, john Stokes was indicted by a Kankakee County grand jury on two counts One count for falsifying his logbook and the second one for violating the hours of service regulation, and both of those are felony charges. Stokes would be sentenced on September 21st 2004 to two years in prison for logbook and hours of service violations and hours of service violations. At sentencing, kankakee County Judge Clark Erickson stated that it was not proven if a lack of rest played a factor in the wreck, but that he fully believed Stokes would have been more able to make safe driving decisions if he had been fully rested. John Stokes would later die in February 2007 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Bourbonet would end up putting a memorial to the victims at the intersection of 45 and 102, across the street from Olivet University In January of 2006,. They would end up permanently closing the grade crossing where the accident occurred, and that was the Bourbonnet Amtrak crash of 1999.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening and if you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your Apple choice, and you can reach out to the show at historyisadisaster at gmailcom, or follow the show on social media at historyisadisaster on Facebook, instagram and a few others and share the episode, because sharing is caring and if there was more caring in the world, maybe history wouldn't be a disaster. Thanks and goodbye.