Train was speeding before fatal wreck
The Amtrak train that plunged off an overpass south of Seattle, killing at least three people, was hurtling 80 km/h over the speed limit when it jumped the track, federal investigators say.
Bella Dinh-Zarr, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said late Monday that the data recorder in the rear locomotive showed the train was going about 130 km/h in a 50 km/h zone when it derailed along a curve, spilling some of its cars onto an interstate highway below.
Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to run off the rails and too early to say why it was going so fast. She said investigators will talk to the engineer and other crew members. In previous wrecks, investigators looked at whether the engineer was distracted or disabled.
The engineer, whose name was not released, was bleeding from the head after the wreck, and both eyes were swollen shut, according to dispatch audio.
The train, with 85 passengers and crew members, was making the inaugural run along a fast new bypass route that was created by refurbishing freight tracks alongside Interstate 5. The 24-kilometre, $233 million project was aimed at speeding up service by bypassing a route with a number of curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.
Positive train control — technology that can automatically slow or stop a speeding train — wasn’t in use on this stretch of track, according to Amtrak President Richard Anderson.
Regulators have been pressing railroads for years to install such technology, but the deadline has been extended repeatedly at the industry’s request and is now the end of 2018.
The NTSB’s Dinh-Zarr said it is too soon to say whether positive train control would have prevented Monday’s tragedy.
The 7:34 a.m. accident left mangled train cars up on top of each other, with one hanging precariously over the freeway. The screech and clang of metal were followed by silence, then screams, as the injured cried out to rescuers and motorists pulled over and rushed to help.
More than 70 people were injured, 10 of them seriously.
One of the dead was identified as Zack Willhoite, a customer service employee at a local transit agency and a railroad buff excited to be on the first passenger run of the new route. He was a member of All Aboard Washington, an organization of rail advocates.
The group’s executive director, Lloyd Flem, said it was a given Willhoite would be on the trip. “It’s pretty devastating. We’re having a tough time,” Flem said.