Amtrak Derailment Leaves at Least 6 Dead in Washington State 12-19-2017, 01:15 AM
#1
A passenger train on a newly opened high-speed Amtrak route jumped the tracks on an overpass south of Tacoma on Monday, slamming rail cars into a busy highway, killing at least six people and injuring more than 75 others, officials said.
The derailment of Amtrak Train No. 501, making the inaugural run of a new service from Seattle to Portland, dropped a 132-ton locomotive in the southbound lanes of the Northwest’s busiest travel corridor, Interstate 5. Two passenger coaches also fell partly in the traffic lanes, and two other coaches were left dangling off the bridge, one of them wedged against a tractor-trailer. On the highway below lay five crumpled cars and two semi-trucks, and huge chunks of concrete that were ripped away from the damaged overpass.
All 12 of the train’s coaches and one of its two engines derailed. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team to the scene to investigate possible causes that could include everything from the speed of the train to whether positive train technology could have slowed it.
“It felt like the end of the world and I was standing amid the wreckage,” said Emma Shafer, 20, a modern dance student who was napping aboard the train with her shoes off when it derailed. She found herself in a coach dangling at a steep angle toward the highway — the man behind her yelling, his legs pinned, while a parent trapped with a baby in a restroom banged on the door for help getting out.
Read more on this tragic situation HERE.
The derailment of Amtrak Train No. 501, making the inaugural run of a new service from Seattle to Portland, dropped a 132-ton locomotive in the southbound lanes of the Northwest’s busiest travel corridor, Interstate 5. Two passenger coaches also fell partly in the traffic lanes, and two other coaches were left dangling off the bridge, one of them wedged against a tractor-trailer. On the highway below lay five crumpled cars and two semi-trucks, and huge chunks of concrete that were ripped away from the damaged overpass.
All 12 of the train’s coaches and one of its two engines derailed. The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team to the scene to investigate possible causes that could include everything from the speed of the train to whether positive train technology could have slowed it.
“It felt like the end of the world and I was standing amid the wreckage,” said Emma Shafer, 20, a modern dance student who was napping aboard the train with her shoes off when it derailed. She found herself in a coach dangling at a steep angle toward the highway — the man behind her yelling, his legs pinned, while a parent trapped with a baby in a restroom banged on the door for help getting out.
Read more on this tragic situation HERE.
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