NTSB starts probe of deadly Wash. accident
Federal investigators are searching for clues behind the ill-fated Amtrak train that derailed yesterday morning during its maiden run on a new high-speed route just south of Seattle and hurtled off the tracks, hurling cars on a nearby highway, killing at least three and injuring roughly 100.
Transitdocs.com, a mapping website of Amtrak trains, showed the train was going 81.1 miles per hour in the moments before the derailment.
“We were coming around the corner to take the bridge over I-5 there, right north of Nisqually, and we went on the ground,” the engineer told a dispatcher in audio released yesterday. “We’ve got cars everywhere and down onto the highway,”
Despite harrowing images of a train engine on the highway and a passenger car perilously dangling from a bridge, none of the fatalities were on the road.
All told, 13 train cars jumped the tracks — including one of the two engines. Some 77 passengers and seven crew members were on board.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were arriving at the crash scene along the highway between Tacoma and Olympia yesterday, but said it was too early to determine the cause.
The Wall Street Journal last night quoted rail experts saying online GPS data from the train and the pattern of wreckage indicated that the train took the curve — with a posted speed limit of 30 miles an hour — too fast, lifting the 12 cars and an engine off the rails.
An anti-crash system for trains designed to avoid human error accidents, like derailments from speeding, wasn’t activated, an Amtrak spokeswoman said.
The train was running a half hour behind schedule, the Journal reported, on its first run on a faster stretch of track between Tacoma and DuPont that had been upgraded as part of a $181 million project. The rails are owned by SoundTransit, Seattle’s public transit system. A spokeswoman said the tracks were tested extensively before the run yesterday.
Amtrak trains are equipped with positive train control, a system that would have slowed it as it entered the curve, but the railroad told the Washington Post the train didn’t have it. The system requires that sensors also be placed along the rail bed, but those were not scheduled to be in place until next year, the Washington State Department of Transportation told the Post.
The Amtrak Cascades service runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Eugene, Oregon, and the de-railed train, which had been slated to leave Seattle around 6 a.m. on a three-and-a-half-hour trip to Portland, was running on an upgraded bypass that avoided the slower route along Puget Sound.
Aleksander Kristiansen, a 24-year-old exchange student from Copenhagen at the University of Washington, 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 something minor,” Kristiansen said.
The back of his 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. Daniella Fenelon, a 19-yearold from Southern California, was taking a cross-country trip during her winter break. “Suddenly there was just a jolt, and I didn’t know what was happening,” Fenelon said. She slammed into the seat area in front of her, and the windows exploded, said Fenelon, who was treated and released from a hospital with a possible concussion.
In his first tweet about the derailment, President Trump saw an opening to tout an infrastructure improvement plan he hopes to push in 2018.
But in subsequent tweets, he took a more sobering tone.
“Our deepest sympathies and most heartfelt prayers are with the victims of the train derailment in Washington State,” Trump tweeted. “We are closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with local authorities.”