‘Everyone was stunned’
Jersey train crash kills one, injures dozens
A speeding rush-hour commuter train crashed through a barrier at the busy Hoboken station and lurched across the waiting area Thursday morning, killing one person and injuring more than 100 others in a tangle of broken concrete, twisted metal and dangling cables, authorities said.
People pulled concrete off bleeding victims and passengers kicked out windows and crawled out amid crying and screaming after the arriving New Jersey Transit train ran off the end of its track. It apparently knocked out pillars as it ground to a halt in a covered waiting area, collapsing a section of the roof onto the first car.
Ross Bauer, an IT specialist who was heading to his Manhattan job from his home in Hackensack, was sitting in the third or fourth car when the train was pulling into the historic 109-year-old station for its final stop.
“All of a sudden, there was an abrupt stop and a big jolt that threw people out of their seats. The lights went out and we heard a loud crashing noise – like an explosion – that turned out to be the roof of the terminal,” he said. “I heard panicked screams, and everyone was stunned.”
Gov. Chris Christie said a woman who was standing on the platform was killed by debris. Of the 108 others injured, 74 of them were hospitalized, according to Christie and area hospitals.
Christie noted it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the crash, though he noted that the train was speeding.
“The train came in at much too high rate of speed, and the question is: ‘Why is that?’” he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to the scene. They will want to know what the operator was doing before the crash and whether the person was distracted, said Bob Chipkevich, who formerly headed the NTSB train crash investigations section.
William Blaine, an engineer for a company that runs freight trains, was inside the station when the train crashed and ran over to help. He walked over to the heavily damaged first car with a transit employee to check on the train’s engineer and said he found him slumped over the controls. Christie said the engineer was in critical condition but co-operating with investigators.