Thursday, January 27, 2005, 6:12PM

(note: the description and the pictures below are graphic--I have not posted anything graphic about any individuals or shown any pictures of the victims, but I want to warn folks that there is some tough material below)

This is the first moment I have come up for air enough to pen something about yesterday's tragedy (excuse any typos--I will edit later). I was awakened by an early call from James Omahen, my Atwater Village deputy (and a resident of the area) about the train derailment. I later learned that in the earliest moments of the tragedy, workers at the Costco, Atwater Village residents, commuters, and factory workers joined the patrol officers of the Northeast Division of LAPD to help passengers out of the trains. The LAPD officers were the first city officials on site and I spoke with Captain Aborn of Northeast Division about their heroism on the site--officers rushed in to help get people out even as cars of the train were tilting over.

Station 50 of the Los Angeles Fire Department was the first station on the scene from LA (not sure about Glendale). LAPD had called for emergency personnel and a tactical alert for the department was issued and soon officers came from throughout LAPD and from Glendale, Burbank, and the LASD (Sherrif).

Various reports said that the accident was in Glendale and others said Atwater Village, part of LA City--both were right as the Metrolink trains run just on the border between the two cities.

I won't go into all the excruciating details of what happened on site, but the carnage was terrible. Passengers aided one another to escape and as LAFD arrived, they punched out a fire that had developed in the engine car (I believe) of the Union Pacific Train that had been idling next to Costco. Since the UP train was fueled up to go to the Pacific Northwest, about 4000 to 5000 gallons of diesel spilled. The fact that the Glendale and LAFD firefighters were able to get that fire extinguished probably saved scores, if not hundreds, of lives.

Costco workers immediately rushed on site and were able to get medical equipment, water, food, tarps, and other badly-needed supplies to the two staging areas set up for survivors. One was set up on the Glendale side and one on the LA side, in the Costco parking lot.

I arrived on the scene in while the rescue continued, and saw my colleauge Tom LaBonge, who is an MTA board member, who had been hiking in Griffith Park, across the river, when he heard the accident and rushed to the site. The inter-agency coordination was incredible. I learned early on that Glendale PD had a suspect in custody (though we did not refer to the detainee as a suspect for a couple of hours) and that he had tried to commit suicide but left his car on the tracks when he apparently couldn't go through with it.

I toured the site--it was horrifying. I have had the misfortune of being in war zones, I have seen cities like Sarajevo after the Balkans war, post-war Eritrea, Cambodia during the end of the years of the Khmer Rouge resistance, and in "liberated" areas of Burma. But seeing a tragedy like this, the immediacy of it, overwhelmed me. Tom said he had never seen anything so bad in his entire life. The smell of fuel, which I first sensed on Los Feliz Boulevard at the 5 freeway, a good 2/3rds of a mile away, was omnipresent, and as I walked past the diesel, I realized that it had mixed with the pouring rain and blood and was a deep, bright, red. The trains were twisted in every direction, an overpass (which killed one of the passengers when a derailed car hit it) was crumpled, cars were overturned and steel twisted everywhere. I went through some of the cars and saw the personal effects--sunglasses here, a commuter's bicycle there, bloodstains everywhere. The authorities had spraypainted the sides of the cars with the number of fatalities in each car to piece together what had happened. The fire department told me that they feared some people might still be under the train cars and were awaiting the heavy equipment to see for sure. Initial checks with x-ray equipment and dogs indicated no further survivors, but crews continued working.

We learned early on that a city employee was among the deceased. While on site, the numbers of dead rose--first four, then five, then seven, then ten, eleven as of now. As we heard bits and pieces about the deceased, about survivors in surgery at area hospitals, we realized that many, many of the riders were government employees on their way to work. I learned that one was Steve, the city employee who handles the sound board during City Council meetings. Later, a colleague passed on the story that Steve always sits in a particular seat but that he was running late and someone else had his seat that morning. When the train derailed, Steve broke his leg. The man sitting in his usual seat died.

Tom LaBonge asked me, Do you remember to kiss Amy (my partner) each morning when you leave the house? I said usually but not always. He said, it is so important, because you just never know what will happen in this world. You never know.

We are working on setting up a donation mechanism--we have a paypal account set up already--for the many many people who have contacted us looking for a way to help.

If you would like to make a donation to assist in the wake of this tragedy, please click above. The donations will be oveseen by the City of Los Angeles to ensure that these resources go to where the need is greatest, including hospital expenses for the victims, relief work, and burial costs for the families of the deceased.

Thanks to all the emergency personnel on site, the residents of Atwater Village, the employees of Costco and the Glendale businesses that were on site, and to all of you for your help in this difficult time. We will continue to update you where we can.

I have not embedded these photos, as they are tough to look at in some cases, but you can click them to see what it was like on-site.

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