Derailed train ‘was doing 80mph in a 30mph zone’
The Amtrak train which derailed south of Seattle, killing three people and injuring dozens more, was travelling at 80mph in a 30mph zone, investigations have revealed.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said information from the event data recorder in the rear locomotive provided information about the train’s speed at the time of the derailment in Washington state.
Authorities say at least three people were killed and dozens injured when the train derailed early on Monday morning, spilling train carriages onto the busy Interstate 5 road.
NTSB board member Bella DinhZarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to derail and that “it’s too early to tell” why it was going so fast.
Federal investigators are continuing their inquiries at the scene.
There were 80 passengers and five on-duty crew when the train derailed and pulled 13 carriages off the tracks.
Authorities said there were three confirmed deaths. More than 70 people were taken for medical care, including 10 with serious injuries.
The accident happened on a newly completed bypass built on an existing inland rail line that runs along Interstate 5 route from Tacoma to DuPont, near where Train 501 derailed.
Track testing began in January and February in advance of Monday’s launch and continued through at least July, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
About two hours after the accident, a US official said he was told at least six people were killed. The official said he had no new information to explain the discrepancy in the numbers.
Kimberly Reason with Sound Transit, the Seattle-area transit agency, which owns the tracks, confirmed that the speed limit at the point where the train derailed is 30mph. Speed signs are posted two miles before the speed zone and just before the speed zone approaching the curve, she said.
Positive train control – the technology that can slow or stop a speeding train – was not in use on this stretch of track, according to Amtrak president Richard Anderson.
He said he was “deeply saddened by all that has happened today”.
Dr Nathan Selden, a neurosurgeon at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, said he and his son drove through the accident scene while travelling north to visit Seattle. The doctor asked if he could help and was ushered to a medical triage tent in the highway median.
He said the most seriously injured had already been whisked away, but the patients he helped appeared to have open head wounds and skull, pelvic or leg fractures, as well as small cuts and neck sprains, he said.
Dr Selden called it a miracle an infant child he saw from the scene appeared completely unharmed.
Student Emma Shafer was heading home to Vancouver, Washington, on a 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 carriage dangling from the overpass. Someone behind her was pinned by the legs, she said, and she and others who could walk exited the train by crawling onto a carriage underneath theirs which had been crushed.
She said: “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.
“I don’t know if I actually heard the sirens, but they were there. A guy was like, ‘Hey, I’m Robert. We’ll get you out of here.”’