AT LEAST 3 KILLED IN WASHINGTON TRAIN CRASH
DUPONT, Washington — An Amtrak train making the first run along a faster new route hurtled off an overpass south of Seattle on Monday and spilled some of its cars onto the highway below, killing at least three people, injuring more than 100 and crushing two vehicles.
Attention quickly turned to the train’s speed. A website that maps location and speed using data from Amtrak’s train tracker app showed the train was going 129 km/h about half a kilometre from the point where it derailed, where the speed limit is significantly lower.
There were 80 passengers and five on duty crew when the train derailed and pulled 13 cars off the tracks. Authorities said there were three confirmed deaths and more than a dozen people with critical or serious injuries.
About two hours after the incident, a U.S. official who with others was briefed on the investigation said he was told at least six people were killed. No additional briefings were provided by late afternoon, and the official said he had no new information to explain the discrepancy in the numbers.
The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A track chart prepared by the Washington State Department of Transportation shows the maximum speed drops from 127 km/h to 50 km/h for passenger trains just before the tracks curve to cross Interstate 5, which is where the train went off the tracks.
The chart, dated Feb. 7, 2017, was submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration in anticipation of the start of passenger service along a new bypass route that shaves 10 minutes off the trip between Seattle and Portland.
It was not clear how fast the train was moving at the precise moment it derailed.
Positive train control — the technology that can slow or stop a speeding train — wasn’t in use on this stretch of track, according to Amtrak president Richard Anderson.
In a radio transmission immediately after the accident, the conductor can be heard saying the train was coming around a corner and crossing a bridge that passed over Interstate 5 when it derailed. Dispatch audio also indicated that the engineer survived with bleeding from the head and both eyes swollen shut.
“I’m still figuring that out. We’ve got cars everywhere and down onto the highway,” he tells the dispatcher, who asks if everyone is OK.
Emma Schafer was headed home to Vancouver, Washington, on winter break from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and was napping when the crash occurred.
She awoke to find her body at a 45-degree angle and her train car dangling from the overpass. “It felt oddly silent after the actual crashing. There was a lot of metal, a lot of screeching, a lot of being thrown around. It was very quiet. Then there was people screaming,” Schafer said.
Dr. Nathan Selden, a neurosurgeon at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said he and his son arrived at the scene while travelling north to visit Seattle. Selden asked if he could help and was ushered to a medical triage tent.
The most seriously injured had already been whisked away, but the patients he helped had open head wounds and skull, pelvic or leg fractures, as well as small cuts and neck sprains, he said.
The train was making the inaugural run on the new route as part of a $180.7-million US project designed to speed up service by removing passenger trains from a route along Puget Sound that’s bogged down by curves, singletrack tunnels and freight traffic.
The new bypass was built on an existing inland rail line that runs along Interstate 5 from Tacoma to DuPont, near where Train 501 derailed.