Death toll climbs to 4 in Amtrak crash and derailment in Missouri
A fourth person has died after an Amtrak train collided with a dump truck and derailed in Missouri.
“Three of the fatalities were passengers on the train,” including a victim who died at University Hospital in Columbia, Mo., the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday. The truck driver also died in the crash, around 12:40 p.m. Monday
Amtrak’s Southwest Chief was carrying approximately 275 passengers and 12 crew members from Los Angeles to Chicago when the collision occurred at a rural intersection near Mendon in the north-central part of the state. The force of the accident was enough to cause eight of the train’s cars and two locomotives to leave the tracks.
The highway patrol has said there are no lights along the gravel road, and that the intersection is not regulated by any electronic controls or moving barriers.
A 16-member team, including NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy arrived on the scene early Tuesday.
“With the team, we’ll have specialists from mechanical, from signal systems from operations and survival factors,” Homendy said. “We’ll have a highway person, a drone operator, and some team members from NTSB’s office of transportation disaster assistance to work with survivors and families of those who were involved in the derailment.”
Investigators have already requested speed data along
the route, data recorder information and camera footage from Amtrak, Homendy noted.
It was not immediately clear exactly how many people were hurt, the patrol said, but hospitals have reported seeing more than 40 patients from the crash, and officials are expecting that number to climb.
The tracks will be closed off, and trains will not be able to run through the area while the investigation unfolds over the next several days.