Rail crash:
Rush-hour commuter train rams into New Jersey station, killing one and injuring more than 100.
HOBOKEN, N.J. — A rushhour commuter train crashed through a barrier at the busy Hoboken station and lurched across the waiting area Thursday morning, killing one person and injuring at least 108 others in a grisly wreck that renewed questions about whether long-delayed automated safety technology could have prevented tragedy.
People pulled chunks of concrete off pinned and bleeding victims, passengers kicked out windows and crawled to safety, and cries and screams could be heard in the wreckage at the station just across the Hudson River from New York City as emergency workers rushed to reach commuters in the tangle of twisted metal and dangling wires.
The New Jersey Transit train ran off the end of its track as it pulled into the station, smashing through a concrete-and-steel bumper. It apparently knocked out pillars as it ground to a halt in the waiting area, collapsing a section of the roof onto the train.
“All of a sudden, there was an abrupt stop and a big jolt that threw people out of their seats. The lights went out, and we heard a loud crashing noise like an explosion” as the roof fell, said Ross Bauer, who was sitting in the third or fourth car when the train entered the historic 109-year-old station, a bustling hub for commuters heading to New York City. “I heard panicked screams, and everyone was stunned.”
Thomas Gallagher, the train’s engineer, was taken to a hospital before being released. Gallagher, 48, was seen slumped over the controls after the train rammed through the barrier.
Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit, said Gallagher has worked for New Jersey Transit for 29 years. He was cooperating with investigators, Gov. Chris Christie said.
A woman standing on the platform — identified as Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, 34, of Hoboken — was killed by debris, and 108 others were injured, mostly on the train, Christie said. Seventy-four of them were hospitalized, some in serious condition, with injuries that included broken bones, bumps and gashes.
De Kroon, 34, worked for the software company SAP in its legal department in Brazil until earlier this year, when she moved to New Jersey after her husband got a job with an international liquor company.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said investigators will determine whether the explanation was an equipment failure, an incapacitated engineer, or something else.
Some witnesses said they didn’t hear or feel the brakes being applied before the crash.
None of NJ Transit’s trains is fully equipped with positive train control, a safety system designed to prevent accidents by overriding the engineer and automatically slowing or stopping trains that are going too fast.
The National Transportation Safety Board has been pressing for some version of the technology since at least 1990, and the industry is under government orders to install it, but regulators have repeatedly extended the deadline at railroads’ request. The target date is now the end of 2018.