By Corey Jones
The Topeka Capital-Journal
TOPEKA, Kan. — A train crashing into a vehicle is akin to an automobile striking a pop can.
This is just one of the take-aways 9-year-old Yasmine Cruz and a few hundred other people learned Saturday afternoon at the sixth annual Emergency Services Showcase at Garfield Park in North Topeka.
Kids were able to crawl around the seats in a Silver Lake Police Department cruiser, see what the inside of an ambulance looks like, and even watch a helicopter take off and land.
The Kansas chapter of Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit group dedicated to ending injuries, collisions and deaths along railways, displayed a passenger car that had been crunched by a train.
The area of the car that was struck appeared as if it had been put through a compactor — for all intents and purposes it had been — but the kicker is the train was only moving 20 miles per hour at the moment of impact.
“That is incredible,” said Nancy Mehmel, who took in the sight of the mangled vehicle with two granddaughters — Yasmine and Serenity Cruz, who is 5 years old. Mehmel said the display drove home the damage a train can inflict upon a vehicle even at slow speeds.
Darlene Osterhaus, the nonprofit’s executive director, said that is exactly what the real-life prop is meant to do.
“It’s like a (crowd) magnet,” Osterhaus said of the mangled car.
According to information provided by Operation Lifesaver, in Kansas there were 44 collisions at railroad intersections in 2011 that ended in 10 injuries and 13 fatalities.
Trespassing incidents led to seven injuries and four fatalities.
Julie La Combe, the organization’s executive director-elect, said it is a crime to walk along railways because they are private property. Rail trespassing incidents since 1997 have caused more injuries and deaths than intersection wrecks, she said, and 2012 already has seen several fatalities resulting from trespassing.
One such tragedy occurred Thursday in North Topeka when a 75-year-old man was struck by a train and killed. Topeka police continue to investigate the incident.
La Combe said the organization often contacts photographers who take senior pictures on railroad tracks.
“Our biggest challenge is the trespassers,” she said.
Silver Lake Police Chief Randall Call stood outside his cruiser and passed out pencils to youth eager to get a better look at his car.
Call said he enjoys the popular event not only because he can disseminate important information, but people can “see what we do on a daily basis.”
Wayne Edkin, a friend of the family who launched the showcase in 2007, said the event is intended to expose children to emergency personnel and first responders.
To young kids, firefighters and other such personnel may look scary as a situation unfolds in front of their young minds. But by seeing the people behind the masks and uniforms in a non-emergency environment, Edkin and other organizers hope children won’t be as afraid of crews if they should encounter them during an actual emergency.
“It takes away a lot of the fear of the unknown,” he said.
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