TRAIN DERAILS OVER HIGHWAY
Amtrak incident in Washington state
Amtrak Train 501 was an hour and a half into its inaugural run from Seattle to Portland, Ore., when it approached a curve while travelling about 128 kilometres an hour. Passenger Chris Karnes said as the train took the bridge over the I-5 freeway near Tacoma, Wash., he could see that they were passing vehicles. Suddenly, he felt “a little bit of a jolt.”
“Then at a certain point, we could hear a crumpling of the train and we were catapulted into the seats in front of us,” he said.
At least three people died after 13 of the 14 train cars jumped the tracks, many spilling over the bridge onto the highway and hitting five vehicles.
A key question for investigators will be why Positive Train Control (PTC) was not activated on the tracks at the time of the derailment. PTC is a technology that automatically slows a train if it is going too fast or could possibly derail.
A total of 77 people were sent to hospital with some patients in critical condition. There were 78 total passengers on board, along with five crew members and a technician.
The route was a new one for Amtrak and was expected to shave 10 minutes off the travel time between the two cities.
Monday, the scene was a jumble of derailed train cars and at least two crushed vehicles that were passing on the highway below. At least one car from the train ended up under the bridge. Another train car dangled from the bridge, piercing the roof of the train car beneath the bridge.
One of the two train engines was spun around on the freeway below the bridge, at least three other cars were clear of the track bed, and two derailed cars remained on the rail bed. Karnes said they were approaching a bend when the accident happened.
“And all of a sudden, we felt this rocking and creaking noise, and then all of a sudden it felt like we were heading down a hill, and the next thing that we know, we’re being slammed into the front of our seats, and the windows are breaking, and then we stop, and there’s water that’s gushing out of the top of the train and all the lights go out and people are screaming,” he told CBS News.
Karnes, who was in a car toward the front of the train, said he and other passengers had to kick out a window to get out. Passengers had visible injuries — “cuts, people bleeding,” he said.
“I did see one person who was laying on the ground and not moving.”
He said military police, firefighters and medics flooded the scene. In his rail car, he said the passenger load was “relatively light.” But authorities said some of the cars derailed in the woods and rescuers were using chainsaws to get to passengers.
“The tracks for this line were supposed to be upgraded to be able to handle higher speeds. So, I’m not sure what happened at this juncture,” said Karnes, a member of the Pierce Transit Community Transportation Advisory Group.
Witness Kolter Raudebauga told NBC the train seemed to have “nosedived,” leaving it “dangling” off the track.”
Daniel Konzelman was one of thousands of commuters barrelling along the highway when the crash happened.
He and a friend pulled over and rushed to help, running along the tracks and over the bridge to get to the scene.
Some train cars had their roofs ripped off or were turned upside down. Others were turned sideways on the bridge. Konzelman, 24, and his friend clambered into train cars to look for victims.
“I just wanted to help people because I would want people to help me,” he said.
The scene was grisly, with some people pinned under the train and others who appeared to be dead. If people could move and seemed stable, Konzelman said he helped them climb out of the train. If they looked seriously hurt, he tried to offer comfort by talking to them to calm them down.
They stayed to help for nearly two hours.
“I wasn’t scared. I knew what to expect … I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. I saw a little bit of both,” Konzelman said.
The Washington State Department of Transportation said the Seattle-Portland corridor was equipped with positive train control, but that the system was not scheduled to be turned on until next year. Amtrak’s trains have been equipped with the devices, but they communicate with sensors along the track bed that had not been activated.
The train was going 81.1 mph (128 km/h) moments before the derailment, according to transitdocs.com, a website that maps Amtrak train locations and speeds using data from the railroad’s train tracker app.
The maximum speed along the stretch of track, known as Point Defiance Bypass, is 79 mph (126 km/h), according to information about the project posted online by the Washington State Department of Transportation.