Rush hour horror as train with 250 on board crashes into station
A PACKED commuter train smashed into a station with such force that its front carriage was pushed 30ft into the air.
The crash brought the roof down on to hundreds of people before the train careered along a concourse and collided with a wall.
Amazingly, only one person was killed, though more than 100 were injured – at least eight of whom were in a serious condition – when the New Jersey train ploughed into Hoboken station yesterday.
Dozens of people covered in blood and with broken bones limped out as rescuers went from carriage to carriage looking for survivors.
Law enforcement sources said there was no sign the crash was the result of terrorism. The National Transportation Safety Board has begun an investigation, which will look to see if there was a mechanical failure or problem with the driver.
Witnesses said they saw the train engineer, who is in a critical condition, slumped over his controls as it entered the station just outside New York. Survivor Nancy Bido said: ‘It just never stopped. It was going really, really fast ... The terminal was the brake for the train.’
Bhagyesh Shah, who was in the second carriage, said: ‘It just kept going and going...The next thing I know, we are ploughing through the platform.’ Last night New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: ‘You can see from the level of destruction at the station this was a train travelling at a high rate of speed’.
The 1614 New Jersey Transit train was running slightly late when it arrived at Hoboken terminal, which serves an estimated 15,000 commuters a day, at 8.45am.
Some 250 people were on board the four-carriage train at the time of the crash, which was described by emergency crews as a ‘mass casualty event’. The only fatality was a person stood on the platform, who appeared to have been hit by debris.
Pictures from the station, which has shut due to fears of structural damage, show steel beams lying on the floor and a tangle of cables hanging from the ceiling.