TRAIN HORROR
Mom dead, 114 injured in Hoboken rail crash
Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, a 34-year-old lawyer and mother of a baby daughter, was killed when a commuter train plowed t hrough Hoboken Terminal yesterday, raining debris on her as she stood in the station. The crash injured scores of people.
A packed NJ Transit train cruised with-hout braking into Hoboken Terminal Thurs-sday and crashed onto a passenger walkway, killing a young mother and injuring 1144 other people, officials said.
The historic station became a scene of terrifying chaos at about 8:45 a.m. when the speeding commuter train barreled past the end of the Track 5 platform and vaulted into the air.
It skidded through the passenger con-course and slammed into structural beams, causing part of the roof to collapse beforee coming to a stop by a waiting-room wall.
Bloodied passengers were forced to climb from train No. 1614 through windows as fellow riders helped each other reach safety.
“The train just didn’t stop, it kinda like picked up speed and crashed into the building. The ceiling of the train fell on my head,” said five-months-pregnant passenger Alexis Valle, 24, who was riding in the first car. “Somebody picked me up and passed me to somebody else through the window.
“I thought we were going to die. I didn’t think we were going to get out.”
Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, a 34-year-old Hoboken lawyer with a baby girl, was killed when debris came crashing down as she stood in the station.
The train’s operator, identified as 48year-old Tommy Gallagher, was seriously injured in the crash but released from a hospital Thursday afternoon.
He was in the front car at the time of impact and has been “fully cooperating” with law enforcement, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said at a press conference.
Gallagher will be interviewed by National Transportation Safety Board investigators, officials said.
There were no red flags in the engineer’s work history, and he doesn’t have a criminal record, according to NBC4 New York. His father told the news outlet that Gallagher has been with NJ Transit for 19 years and is a dedicated worker.
“We’re very upset with this whole matter,” the dad said.
Dozens of injured commuters were taken to area hospitals, including Jersey City Medical Center and Point Care Hospital Center, and all were expected to make full recoveries, officials said.
The three-car passenger train was running on the Pascack Valley line, departing from Spring Valley in Rockland County. It was due in Hoboken at 8:38 a.m. and had apparently been running late.
A railroad engineer who witnessed the crash estimated that the train was traveling at least 30 mph as it entered the station. The speed limit there is 10 mph, an NTSB official said. It remained unclear why the train didn’t stop.
Christie said there’s “no indication that this is anything other than a tragic accident.”
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Gov. Cuomo said, “We know what happened. We don’t know why it happened. The train obviously came in at too high a speed and didn’t stop; went through the barriers.”
Cuomo said that given the degree of damage, it’s remarkable that more lives weren’t lost.
“When you see the destruction up close, the silver lining is that there’s only one fatality thus far because the destruction is really significant,” he said.
Most of those injured were passengers on the train, which was carrying more than 200 people, officials said.
The crash brought rail service at the busy Hoboken terminal to a halt during rush hour. PATH train service was temporarily suspended but back up and running by Thursday afternoon.
The Federal Railroad Administration and the NTSB immediately launched investigations into the crash.
NTSB investigator Bella Dinh-Zarr said that early on the probe had been hampered by the state of the mangled terminal.
“Water has been leaking all day, so there may be some structural damage,” she said. “Because of the age of the building [built in 1907], there are concerns about asbestos.”
Investigators won’t be able to access the passenger cars until Friday, after workers have removed the station’s canopy.
But the probers have been able to reach the locomotive, which has a recorder that may hold key data about its speed and braking, Dinh-Zarr said. Another recorder is located in the front cab car and both have outward facing cameras, she added.
“We are going to make sure that our investigators and first responders are safe before we access the information,” Dinh-Zarr said. “That information is in the train and isn’t going anywhere. We have plenty of people back there watching it.”
About 15,100 passengers travel through busy Hoboken Terminal each weekday and nearly 309,000 riders use NJ Transit trains, according to agency statistics.