DEATH TRAIN IN H'WAY PLUNGE
Maiden Amtrak run’s Wash. disaster
An Amtrak train on its maiden high-speed run careened off an overpass and plunged onto a busy Washington state highway, killing at least three people and injuring scores more during the Monday-morning rush.
The derailment sent train cars hurtling into five passenger vehicles and two tractor-trailers on I-5 near Olympia, officials said, with some passenger carriages overturned on the roadway and dangling from above.
Amtrak 501 from Seattle to Portland — which carried 77 passengers and seven crew members — was traveling 81.1 mph a quarter-mile before it jumped the tracks, according to data compiled by train-tracking Web site TransitDocs.com.
The speed limit on most of the train’s route is 79 mph, but it drops to 30 mph on the curve where it derailed, The Seattle Times reported.
Amtrak President and co-CEO Richard Anderson admitted during a conference call with reporters that anti-crash technology wasn’t activated on the train.
Positive train control monitors speed and location to automatically activate braking. Amtrak is under federal order to have it installed on all trains by the end of next year.
A spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff ’s Department predicted the death toll would rise, noting that some train cars were still “not safe enough to search.”
“We know that there’s nobody alive in them at this point, but there are some other fatals that we are probably going to find,” the spokesman, Ed Troyer, told CNN.
An Associated Press report saying that the train may have struck something before derailing and that at least six people were killed was not confirmed.
The train crashed near Lacey, a city east of the state capital, Olympia, shortly before 7:45 a.m. local time, with officials saying the first 13 of its 14 cars derailed.
Aerial video showed train cars scattered on and around the three-lane highway, with just one of the vehicle’s two engines still on the tracks.
Passenger Chris Karnes described the terrifying feeling when the train left the rails.
“We had just passed the city of DuPont, and it seemed like we were going around a curve,” Karnes told CBS News.
“All of a sudden, we felt this rocking and creaking noise, and it felt like we were heading down a hill. The next thing we know, we’re being slammed into the front of our seats, windows are breaking, we stop, and there’s water gushing out of the train. People were screaming.”
Dan Konzelman, an Eagle Scout, and girlfriend Alicia Hoverson were among the good Samaritans who stopped to help when they saw the disaster unfold.
The couple, who had been driv-
ing to work, helped some passengers down to the freeway to await first responders, then maneuvered through the wrecked train until they came to a car that had flipped over and sheared open, Konzelman told ABC News.
“We climbed underneath the train as best we could, and there were people, like, with half their bodies pinned who couldn’t move and were in a lot of pain,” he said.
“A lot of them were screaming and moaning, but there was nothing we could do to help them really, so we just stayed with them. We held their hands, we talked to them, we rubbed their backs, tried to get them to just relax and try to be a comfortable as they could.”
A dramatic radio transmission captured by the Web site Broadcastify revealed one of the crew members breathlessly reporting the crash to a dispatcher.
“Amtrak 501. Emergency. Emergency. Emergency. We are on the ground,” the unidentified male crew member said.
CHI Franciscan Health, which operates a series of hospitals in the area, said 77 injured people were brought to its facilities, with four in critical “level red” condition, The Seattle Times reported.
The train was headed south for the first trip of a new Amtrak Cascades daily route that went into service at 6 a.m. Monday. The new route was established as part of a $181 million project that included a new Amtrak station in Tacoma and installation of high-speed rails known as the Point Defiance Bypass, according to The Seattle Times.
President Trump tweeted that the derailment “shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly,” then followed up with a message saying his “thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved.”