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| 'Total destruction': At least 15 die in Metrolink crash - |
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victims cry
 Posted:
Sat Sep 13, 2008 2:20 am |
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'Total destruction': At least 15 die in Metrolink crash
I know Ike is big story tonight, but this is another huge tragedy that occurred.
| Quote: | Commuter train with 225 aboard slams into freight train on winding route in Chatsworth. More than 135 are injured.
By Joel Rubin, Ann M. Simmons and Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 13, 2008
Rescue teams worked frantically into the night Friday after a Metrolink passenger train carrying 225 people collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train on a sharp curve in Chatsworth, killing at least 15 people and leaving more than 135 injured. It was one of the worst train crashes in Southern California history and Metrolink officials said they could not explain why warning systems failed to prevent such a catastrophic collision.
Los Angeles City Fire Capt. John Virant, his face glistening with sweat hours after the crash, described the scene as "total destruction . . . chaos." "They are in there removing dead bodies that are lying on top of survivors," Virant said. In the front train carriage, he said, "it was as if somebody had just taken all the seats and thrown them in there."
Photos: Metrolink train collision Map of crash locationLive video of Chatsworth Metrolink crash
Survivors recount harrowing moment when trains collided
Video: Dramatic rescue from crash
Metrolink's Train 111, en route from Los Angeles' Union Station to Moorpark, had just left the Chatsworth station when the crash occurred at 4:23 p.m. on a 45-degree bend. The engine of the freight train embedded itself in the front Metrolink carriage as both trains derailed, sending one of the train's three cars full of homebound commuters keeling onto its side. An earsplitting concussion rocked nearby homes, followed by screams from those aboard.
"I saw it coming," said Eric Forbes, 56, an administrator at Cal State Northridge who was riding in the second or third car of the Metrolink train when he glanced out the window to see the freight train bearing down. He spoke later at a nearby triage center, his raspy voice swelling with emotion as he was wheeled on a stretcher to an ambulance.
"There was no time to stop," he said. "The next thing I knew I was in a seat in front of me. It was horrible."
Related information
Metrolink releases statement, hotline for families
Passengers at Union Station wonder how, when they
will get home
Previous Metrolink accidents
Metrolink A-Z Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrell said officials did not yet know how the accident occurred. "Obviously two trains are not supposed to be at the same place at the same time."
Tom Dinger, an engineer who retired last year from Amtrak after a 43-year railroad career, said normal procedure called for the northbound passenger train to pull into a rail siding at the Chatsworth station to allow the southbound freight train to pass. He said he had steered through that stretch of track hundreds of times. Between Chatsworth and Simi Valley there is only one set of tracks because of narrow tunnels that trains use to go through the Santa Susana Pass.
He said he talked by telephone with Metrolink conductor Bob Hildebrand, who was injured. Hildebrand told him he was in the rear club car when the trains collided. "He told me they were going 40 mph and came to a dead stop," Dinger said.
Metrolink said the train's engineer, whom it did not identify, died in the crash. There was no word on the fate of the Union Pacific crew.
Joelle Ouellet, 38, said she was a few hundred feet away, turning around her horse on a nearby ranch, when the trains collided. "I heard a huge crash," she said. "Then I saw a fireball. I ran over there and there were people lying all over the hill."
As the rescue effort swung into full gear, yellow-clad firefighters clambered over the train cars and peeled back the roof of one car to gain entry to the passenger compartment.
"Victims are on top of victims," Los Angeles Fire Chief Douglas Barry said after surveying the scene. "Metal and debris is all tangled together. It's a difficult situation."
At one point, a Los Angeles police officer went to the house of Jim Halty, who lives near the tracks. They had a brief conversation and the officer left with an American flag.
A short time later, alongside the wreckage, scores of uniformed Los Angeles Police Department officers formed two lines in a makeshift formation waiting for rescue crews to extract the body of an LAPD officer on her way home from work.
With somber faces and hands clasped in front of them, they waited in silence, many peering up at the hole cut in the twisted metal of the front train car, from which firefighters were pulling bodies.
Shortly after sunset, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke to reporters at the scene, saying: "We don't know the number of people still trapped inside. We don't know what condition they're in. There are people trapped in there dead and alive -- they know that some are dead."
He said at least 10 fatalities had been confirmed by the coroner's office and that the number of injured "is hard to estimate at this point. We know that dozens of people have been injured, probably over 100." The death toll was later raised to at least 15.
Villaraigosa also said he was heartbroken by what he called "the devastation, the carnage," adding, "I haven't seen anything like it."
There were three passenger cars on the Metrolink train, each capable of carrying up to 155 people.
Injured passengers, some of them in critical condition, were taken to several nearby hospitals, including Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, Huntington Hospital, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, UCLA Medical Center and Northridge Hospital Medical Center. The triage center was established at the Chatsworth Hills Academy, just yards from the crash site.
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| victims cry
Posted:
Sat Sep 13, 2008 2:22 am |
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Three hours after the crash, as darkness fell, several victims were still being assessed, lying under thick red blankets to keep them warm on the cold grass. Medical personnel wheeled victims on stretchers to an armada of ambulances. One man walked slowly with bandages on his nose and face, an IV bag held aloft by a firefighter.
Another woman was whisked off with an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose, with her purse tucked in against the rail of the stretcher.
Photos: Metrolink train collision Map of crash locationLive video of Chatsworth Metrolink crash
Survivors recount harrowing moment when trains collided
Video: Dramatic rescue from crash
All wore the color-coded tags that indicated the severity of their injuries and their names. A medevac helicopter lifted off, the noise drowning out the shouts of personnel and then leaving relative silence in its place. Ambulance lights bathed the scene in the bright flashes of their red and white emergency lights.
Metrolink trains have been involved in several serious wrecks in recent years, the worst of them a crash with an SUV near Glendale that killed 11 people in 2005. Friday's crash more closely resembled one in Placentia in 2002, in which three people died and more than 260 were injured when a Burlington Northern & Santa Fe freight train plowed into a double-decker Metrolink passenger train.
Federal investigators blamed that crash on an inattentive Burlington Northern crew that missed a warning signal as well as on the lack of an automatic braking system on the freight train.
Related information
Metrolink releases statement, hotline for families
Passengers at Union Station wonder how, when they
will get home
Previous Metrolink accidents
Metrolink A-Z The worst train wreck in Los Angeles history occurred on Jan. 22, 1956, when a Santa Fe train en route from Los Angeles to San Diego lurched off a curve near the Los Angeles River, killing 30 people and injuring 130.
Professor James Moore, the director of the transportation engineering program at USC, said he was surprised by the collision because a great deal of money has been invested in technology designed to prevent such head-on crashes.
"This is quite different from the Glendale crash. In that one, there was a Jeep Cherokee on the tracks that was not supposed to be there," Moore said. "These trains were rolling assets that were subject to active management, and the system is designed to make sure they do not occupy the same place at the same time."
Moore said he suspected that the "geometry" of the site -- referring to the severe angle of the bend -- may have played a role.
Jeremy Schneider, a 36-year-old paralegal from Simi Valley, was sitting next to a friend after the train pulled out of the Chatsworth station. "We were talking and all of a sudden -- bam!"
Schneider said he assessed the situation, saw that his friend "had a massive gash on her head," and began moving through the car, seeing how he could help. "I see a fire, the train's on fire," he said. "A lot of people can't move. . . . One guy was yelling all the time, 'Please get me out of here.' He was pinned."
Schneider said he had a friend who was injured in a previous Metrolink crash. "I think it's an outrage that Metrolink has let this happen again," he said. "How do you hit a freight train head on in broad daylight? How could this happen?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-traincrash13-2008sep13,0,2874450.story?page=2
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Posted:
Sat Sep 13, 2008 12:44 pm |
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Coroner says more bodies in LA train wreckage
Published - Sep 13 2008 01:25PM EDT | AP
A Los Angeles County coroner's official says several more bodies remain in the wreckage of the Los Angeles commuter train that collided with a freight train in addition to the 18 confirmed deaths already announced.
Assistant coroner's chief Ed Winter said Saturday that recovery crews still have not been able to get into the lower level of a mangled two-level Metrolink passenger car but they can see several bodies.
Winter says those bodies are not included in the 18 deaths officials announced earlier in the day.
The Metrolink commuter train collided head-on with a freight train Friday afternoon in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ The mayor of Los Angeles says 18 people have been confirmed dead in the collision of a commuter train and freight train.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Saturday that the number of injured remains at 135, with 81 people in hospitals.
Fire official Mario Rueda says the likelihood of anyone remaining alive in the tangled wreckage of the two trains is very remote.
The trains collided Friday afternoon in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley.
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Location: Living happily in my "clueless" little world.
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| Eliza
Posted:
Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:52 am |
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Report: Train engineer may have been text-messaging
LINK
Dispatcher Tried to Warn Train Engineer
LOS ANGELES -- A dispatcher tried to warn the engineer of a commuter train that he was about to collide with a freight train, but the call came too late, rail officials investigating the crash that killed 25 people said Sunday.
The dispatcher reached the conductor in the rear of the train, not before it had already crashed into the oncoming Union Pacific engine at 40 mph, officials with the Metrolink commuter line said.
The engineer was killed in the accident, the nation's deadliest rail disaster in 15 years.
Metrolink said the engineer ran a red signal, but federal investigators said it could be a year before they determine a cause.
The National Transportation Safety Board said that it was looking into a report that the engineer may have been text-messaging around the time of the crash.
"We're going to look into that, anything that can help us find the cause of this accident," said NTSB spokesman Terry Williams.
Rescue crews recovered two data recorders from the Metrolink train and one data recorder and one video recorder from the freight train. The video has pictures from forward-facing cameras, and the data recorders have information on speed and braking patterns.
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Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.
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| Eliza
Posted:
Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:39 am |
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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Federal investigators said Sunday they plan to obtain the cell phone records of two teenagers and the engineer of a commuter train to determine whether text messages played a part in a head-on collision that killed 25 people.
The Metrolink train had failed to stop for a red signal, triggering the Friday collision with a freight train, according to the commuter train's operators. In addition to the 25 fatalities, more than 130 passengers were injured.
On Sunday, Kitty Higgins of the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators have been in touch with two teenagers who told a local television station that they had been exchanging text messages with the Metrolink train engineer before the impact.
The engineer, who has not been identified officially, was a subcontractor employed by another company and died in the crash.
"We have been in contact with them and their families. They have been fully cooperative," Higgins told reporters. "We are going to be obtaining records from their cell phones and of the deceased ... to begin to determine what might have happened and what if any role [cell phones] might have played in this accident."
Metrolink forbids train operators from using cell phones or other electronic devices while on duty, she said. Watch report on investigation into the collision »
One of the teens -- a 15-year-old train enthusiast -- told KCBS-TV that he had been talking shop with the engineer and received a text message at 4:22 p.m., a minute before the crash.
Higgins would not say what the teens and their families have told investigators.
She added that investigators have not recovered the engineer's cell phone from the crash site.
"I'm not saying there wasn't a cell phone," she said. "All I'm saying is that ... we were not able to find one."
A day earlier, Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said the collision resulted from "human error."
"We believe that it was our engineer that failed to stop at a signal."
Just like regular vehicles, trains are subject to signal systems, she said. "They receive a signal to stop and they must hold their location until other traffic has passed."
Sometimes, trains are moved to a siding area to wait, she said. But a review of "a number of programs," including the signal system itself, showed the engineer failed to heed that signal, Tyrrell said.
The majority of the fatalities occurred in the first train car behind the locomotive, officials said, as the impact pushed the locomotive back into the car.
The crash occurred about 4:30 p.m. Friday in Chatsworth, a northwest Los Angeles suburb. The Metrolink commuter train had about 220 passengers on board at the time.
The wreck occurred on a part of the track that curves, and where the speed limit is 40 miles per hour, Tyrrell said.
The train was going 42 miles per hour, Higgins of the NTSB said.
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