Ear Hustle

Derailment Of An Amtrak Train In Philadelphia Leaves 6 Dead And 150 Injured

amtraktrain-derailment

Photo Credit: CNN

As day broke in Philadelphia on Wednesday, rescue workers were still searching inside the mangled wreckage of an Amtrak train that derailed the night before, killing at least six people and sending another 150 to various hospitals.

Among those killed was a midshipman from the U.S. Naval academy in Annapolis, Maryland, a source close to the Naval Academy said.

Temple University Hospital medical director Herb Cushing said Wednesday morning that 25 passengers were still at Temple — the closest trauma center to the crash site — eight of them in critical condition.

Cushing said many of the injuries suffered by passengers came when other passengers or objects fell on them.

“It is an absolute, disastrous mess,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said of the crash site. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 was traveling from Washington to New York carrying 238 passengers and five crew members when it derailed about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia.

The impact tore cars apart, sending seven of them flying from the tracks, and left the engine a mangled mess.

“We have confirmed an engine and all seven cars derailed,” a U.S. Department of Transportation representative told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the engine and two cars were left standing upright, three cars were tipped on their sides, and one was nearly flipped over on its roof. The seventh one is “leaning hard,” they said.

“We do not know what happened here. We do not know why it happened,” Nutter said. There was no indication the derailment was a result of an impact with another train, he said.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the scene Wednesday morning to begin the investigation into what happened.

So far, there’s nothing to indicate the incident was an act of terrorism.

“Until the second of impact, everything was normal,” passenger Daniel Wetrin told CNN. “Then it was just chaos.”

Jeremy Wladis was in the very last car, eating.

“The next thing you know, the train starts doing funny things, and it gradually starts getting worse and worse,” he said.

Then, things started flying — phones, laptops. “Then people.”

“There were two people in the luggage rack above my head. Two women, catapulted (there).”

Firefighters arrived to find seven cars and the train’s engine derailed. Most of the passengers were able to escape, climbing out of windows to safety. Crews had to cut through the cars to get to others.

Amtrak

Photo Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

Janna D’Ambrisi was in the second-to-last car, reading a book when she felt the jolt.

“Suddenly it felt like we were going a little too fast around a curve,” she said.

The car she was in started to tip, and she was thrown onto another girl.

“People started to fall on us,” D’Ambrisi said.

“I just held on to her leg and sort of bowed my head and I was kind of praying, ‘Please make it stop.’ “

Fortunately, her car didn’t tip over and she was able to make it out safely.

Amtrak train crash victims tell their stories

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Most Popular

To Top