COLUMBIA, S.C. — One of two Amtrak staffers killed in Sunday’s crash had told his brother he worried about dying in a wreck on the rails.
Michael Kempf, 54, was killed Sunday when an Amtrak train ran off the main track, smashing into a parked train car. Kempf, the train’s engineer, was from Savannah, Georgia, and had worked for the company more than a decade, after previously working as a conductor for CSX and serving in the U.S. Army for 20 years, according to WTOC.
During his time working for Amtrak, Kempf had told his brother, Rich Kempf, he had seen enough accidents to make him concerned, the station reported. Rich Kempf also told the New York Daily News his brother had been “voicing concerns about getting killed.”
Sunday’s wreck marked the second fatal Amtrak crash in a week and the third in the last few months. Three people were killed in Washington state in December when an Amtrak train crashed there.
“Me and him always talked about this ... something happening,” Rich Kempf told the Daily News.
In a separate interview with WTOC, Rich Kempf recalled his brother wondering, “What happens to me the next time I get in a crash. Am I gonna die?”
Michael Kempf leaves behind a wife and three sons, according to multiple reports. Rich Kempf said his brother, Michael, was a “good guy” and a “good dad.” The two spoke on the phone daily.
“If you were broken down on the side of the road, he would stop and help you,” Rich Kempf told WTOC. “He wouldn’t just drive by and leave you hanging. I mean he would bend over backward to help anybody, you know?”
Also killed in the 2:35 a.m. crash was Michael Cella. Cella, 36 of Orange Park, Fla., was the train’s conductor. Both Cella and Michael Kempf were in the first car of the train at the time of the wreck, said Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher.
Cella is survived by his wife, Christine, and two children.
“He was all about his family,” said Michael Callanan, a rail safety expert who once worked alongside Cella. Callanan was hired as a conductor at Amtrak in 2008, and posted to Jacksonville along with Cella.
“He was super-nice, always had a smile on his face,” Callanan said. “He was soft-spoken and eager to learn.”
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Josh Kendall and Dwayne McLemore contributed to this story.
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