Brooklyn train derails, injuring more than 100

NEW YORK — A Long Island Rail Road train crashed at the busiest transportation hub in Brooklyn, N.Y., during the morning rush Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people and disrupting the commute for thousands more, authorities said.

Officials said the train rammed into a bumping block as it pulled into the Atlantic Terminal station in downtown Brooklyn around 8 a.m., knocking the front two cars off the tracks and crashing into a room beyond the track.

Donette Smith, 55, who was on board, said people had gotten to their feet and were standing in the aisle as the train moved into the station. Then an “extremely hard” jolt sent everyone to the floor.

“People just went flying,” she said. “Bodies were everywhere. It was very scary.”

The passengers emerged to find the station filled with smoke.

People were removed from the train on stretchers, some with neck braces, and one person had a bloody mouth, she said.

Fire Department officials said the crash could have been far worse. One rail of Track 6, on which the train was traveling, sliced through the floor of a train car, they said. The crash caused substantial damage.

Most of the injuries occurred when the train came to an abrupt stop after crashing into the bumping block at the end of the track, said Thomas Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the Long Island Rail Road.

Prendergast said the train’s operator was responsible for stopping the train inside the station and that there were no other mechanisms on the train to prevent it from hitting the block. He said he did not know whether the train had been fitted with a camera, and that the train’s operator was being interviewed.

“What happened with the operator, we don’t know,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who toured the scene.

Most of the passengers, who numbered between 600 and 700, were able to walk off the train. Officials said 106 people had been taken to hospitals.

The most severe injury appeared to be a woman who may have broken her leg, the governor said.

The derailment was reminiscent of a New Jersey Transit train crash in September that killed a woman who was standing on a platform at the terminal in Hoboken and injured more than 100 others.

In that crash, an arriving train also plowed through the bumper at the end of a track and hit the station.

MARK LENNIHAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS An injured passenger is wheeled out of the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Wednesday after a Long Island Rail Road train crashed into a bumper during the morning rush hour. The cause has not been determined.