Train derails, killing at least 6 near Seattle
Amtrak cars spill from overpass to interstate in first run on faster route.
An Amtrak DUPONT, WASH. — train making the first-ever run along a faster new route hurtled off an overpass south of Seattle at an estimated 80 mph Monday and spilled some of its cars onto the highway below, killing at least six people, authorities said.
Seventy-seven passengers and five crew members were aboard when the train derailed and pulled 13 cars off the tracks. At least 50 people were hospitalized, more than a dozen with critical or serious injuries, authorities said.
An official briefed on the investigation said that preliminary signs indicate that Train 501 may have struck something before going off the track about 40 miles south of Seattle. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office said several vehicles on Interstate 5 were struck by falling train cars and multiple motorists were injured. No fatalities of motorists were reported.
In a radio transmission immediately after the accident, the conductor can be heard saying the train was coming around a
corner and was 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.
Aleksander Kristiansen, a 24-year-old exchange student at the University of Washing- ton from Copenhagen, was going to Portland to visit the city for the day. “I was just coming out of
the bathroom when the accident happened. My car just started shaking really, really badly. Things were falling off the shelf. Right away, you knew that this was not some- thing minor,” he said.
The back of his train car was wide open because it had separated from the rest of the train, so he and others were able to jump out to safety. He was at about the
middle of the train, either the sixth or seventh car, he said, and was “one of the lucky ones.”
Dr. Nathan Selden, a neurosurgeon at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said he and his son drove through the accident scene while traveling north to visit Seattle. The doctor asked if he could help and was ushered to a medical triage tent in the highway median.
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.
He called it a miracle that an infant child he saw from the scene appeared completely unharmed.
President Donald Trump used the deadly derailment to call for more infrastructure spending in a tweet sent about three hours after the
accident. He said the wreck shows “more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly.” The accident happened on a newly completed bypass.
The train was making the inaugural run on the new route as part of a $180.7
million project designed to speed up service by removing passenger trains from a route
along Puget Sound that’s bogged down by curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators was on its way to the scene from Washington, D.C.
The train was going 81.1 mph 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 is 79 mph, according to information about the route posted online by the Washington State Department of Transportation.