adminPHILADELPHIA — Rescue crews searched the mangled wreckage for victims yesterday as investigators tried to determine why an Amtrak train jumped the tracks in a crash that killed at least six people, injured more than 200 and plunged screaming passengers into darkness and chaos. Investigators recovered the train’s data recorders and said they expected them to yield crucial information, including how fast the train was going as it rounded a sharp curve and derailed in the city’s working-class Port Richmond section shortly after 9pm on Tuesday.
“It’s a devastating scene. There are many first responders out there. They’re working. They’re examining the equipment, seeing if there are any more people in the rail cars,” Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board said.
Mayor Michael Nutter said some people remained unaccounted for, raising fears the death toll could rise, though he cautioned that some passengers listed on the Amtrak manifest might not have boarded the train, while others might not have checked in with authorities.
“We’re heartbroken by what has happened here,” he said.
Train 188, a Northeast Regional, was en route from Washington to New York when it lurched to the right and fell off the tracks at a notorious curve not far from the scene of one of the nation’s deadliest train wrecks more than 70 years ago.
The conductor survived and was expected to give a statement to police. The train also had a video camera in its front end that could yield clues to what happened, Sumwalt said.
Passengers scrambled through the windows of toppled cars to escape. One of the seven cars was severely mangled. Hospitals treated more than 200 people for injuries that included burns and broken bones.
The accident closed the nation’s busiest rail corridor between New York and Washington as federal investigators arrived to begin examining the twisted wreckage, the tracks and the signals.
Passenger Jillian Jorgensen, 27, was seated in the quiet car — the second passenger car — and said the train was going “fast enough for me to be worried” when it began to lurch to the right. — AP.
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