Amtrak blamed in fatal crash

PHILADELPHIA — Federal investigators said Tuesday they found major lapses in how Amtrak deals with safety, including more than two dozen hazardous conditions at the work zone in Philadelphia where a New York train slammed into a maintenance backhoe last year and killed two workers.

Chief among them, investigators said, were a foreman’s failure to make sure dispatchers were still rerouting trains from the area under repair near Philadelphia and the crew’s failure to use a device that would have automatically blocked trains from accessing those tracks.

“Had any of these issues been addressed, the accident may have been prevented,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Joe Gordon said at a public meeting on the crash at the agency’s Washington headquarters.

The April 2016 crash killed backhoe operator Joseph Carter Jr. and supervisor Peter Adamovich. About 40 passengers on the New York to Savannah, Ga., train were injured.

“Amtrak’s lack of a strong safety culture is at the heart of this accident,” said investigator Mike Hoepf.