PHILADELPHIA — An Amtrak train hurtling toward New York City derailed in Philadelphia Tuesday night, killing eight and injuring scores — six of them critically — as train cars were left strewn along the tracks.
The Northeast Regional, which left Washington, DC, earlier in the day with 238 passengers and five crew members, was heading into a perilous turn at about 9:30 p.m. when it started shaking and its cars derailed.
About 200 people were sent to hospitals to be evaluated or treated, according to Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management.
The accident closed the nation’s busiest rail corridor between New York and Washington as federal investigators began sifting through the mangled remains to determine what went wrong.
The National Transportation Safety Board said an investigative team arrived at the scene early Wednesday, between 4 and 5 a.m., and they had recovered the train’s black box.
Richard Sumwalt of the NTSB said the focus would be on finding survivors, before moving to the accident investigation.
“The search and recovery will take precedence over our accident investigation,” he said.
The Federal Railroad Administration said it sent at least eight investigators to the scene.
The train conductor was injured but survived the crash, and police were interviewing him in the morning.
Some of the front cars were left mangled heaps of twisted metal as rescuers desperately tried to search for victims.
“It is an absolute disastrous mess,” said a stunned Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
He said there were train cars that were “completely overturned, on their side, ripped apart.
It was unclear hours later how many people were still unaccounted for.
Anguished passengers, including former US Congressman Patrick J. Murphy of Pennsylvania, tweeted harrowing images from inside the train as it lay on its side.
“I’m on @Amtrak train that just crashed,” Murphy tweeted. “Im ok. Helping others. Pray for those injured.”
Murphy later described the moment the train went off the rails.
“It wobbled at first and then went off the tracks,” he told NBC/Philadelphia. “There were some pretty banged-up people.”
“One guy next to me was passed out. We kicked out the window in the top of the train car and helped get everyone out.”
Amtrak said all rail service on the busy Northeast Corridor between New York and Philadelphia had been suspended.
The train was due to arrive at Penn Station in Manhattan at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. An employee with the Associated Press who was aboard the train described the sudden stop.
“The train started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake,” said the employee, Paul Cheung. “Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake . . . You could see people’s stuff flying over me.”
Another passenger was a New York Observer reporter from New York City, who tweeted from the hospital that it was the worst experience of her life.
Jillian Jorgensen, 27, told the AP she was seated in the second passenger car, a quiet car, when the train was going “fast enough for me to be worried.”
The train derailed and she “flew across the train” when the lights went out, landing under seats that came loose from the floor.
“It was terrifying and awful, and as it was happening it just did not feel like the kind of thing you could walk away from, so I feel very lucky,” Jorgensen wrote in an email. “The scene in the car I was in was total disarray and people were clearly in a great deal of pain.”
She wriggled free as passengers screamed, and saw one man lying still, his face covered in blood. Another woman near her had a broken leg. She climbed out an emergency exit window, with a firefighter helping her down a ladder to safety.
“I am in a hospital getting checked out, and it was the worst experience of my life but I’m OK,” Jorgensen tweeted later.
Nutter said rescue efforts would continue throughout Wednesday morning.
“We will continue for some time out here with any continued search,” he said, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “Obviously, at 1 o’clock in the morning, in darkness, that is a more difficult obligation.”
Heavy equipment needed to sift through the mangled wreckage began to arrive at 2 a.m., the paper reported.
Early reports indicated the train derailed when it entered the curve. An engine and all seven cars derailed, a US Department of Transportation spokesman said Wednesday morning, the paper reported.
The area where the train derailed is usually under a speed restriction, requiring trains to slow down, the paper said. Train 188’s speed at the time of the tragedy was not immediately available.
“Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and injured in this accident. We are assembling on site and will begin a thorough investigation into the cause of this accident,” acting Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg said.
Mary Barcellos of New York walked away from the site with one shoe missing — while others around her limped as cops directed them to buses for the hospital, the report said.
“It just tilted like you were going around a sharp curve, and then it just flipped all the way over,” Barcellos said about the train, which landed upside down and knocked her to a window. A woman next to her broke a leg, she said.
“I’m very lucky,” she said.
Jeremy Wladis, 51, of New York was in the last car when he felt the crash and saw “phones, laptops, everything flying,” the paper reported.
“There were women launched up in the luggage rack,” he said about 11:45 p.m. “I don’t even know how they got there.”
Officials said the cause of the crash was unknown, but an Amtrak report on the Northeast Corridor released in 2013 said the tracks were in desperate need of improvement.
“The NEC consists of a mix of aging infrastructure, much of it built 80-150 year ago, that will require extensive repair for safe and efficient operations,” the report states.
The report called for more capital funding of the railway in order to improve “service reliability.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” that the crash showed it was time to wake up about infrastructure.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. This one hits home,” said de Blasio. “So many people depend on this train line. This one is a wake-up call. We have got to get serious about investing in infrastructure.”
Tuesday night’s tragedy wasn’t the first rail disaster to take place on that stretch of tracks.
A Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed on the same curve in 1943, killing 79 people and injuring 117 when an axle froze on the bend.
The crash of the Congressional Limited, an express train between Washington, DC, and New York, was one of the worst rail disasters in the nation’s history.
After Tuesday’s crash, police swarmed around the site, in the working-class area of Port Richmond, and told people to get back. Cops pleaded with this message: “Do not go to scene of derailment. Please allow first responders room to work.”
Bloodied and bandaged passengers were rescued from the wreckage and brought to waiting ambulances. Roads around the crash site were blocked off. Waves of firefighters continued toward the train cars, taking people out.
Several injured people, including one man complaining of neck pain, were rolled away on stretchers. Others wobbled while walking away. An elderly woman was given oxygen.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday night it was gathering information about the derailment.
The FBI said there was no evidence of terrorism, according to CNN.
Area resident David Hernandez, whose home is close to the tracks, heard the accident happen.
“It sounded like a bunch of shopping carts crashing into each other,” he said.
The crashing sound lasted a few seconds, he said, and then there was chaos and screaming.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who was in touch with the mayor and other state and local officials about the tragedy, thanked the first responders for “their brave and quick action.”
“My thoughts and prayers are with all of those impacted by tonight’s train derailment,” he said in a statement. “For those who lost their lives, those who were injured and the families of all involved, this situation is devastating.”
Port Richmond is one of five neighborhoods in what’s known as Philadelphia’s River Wards, dense rowhouse neighborhoods located not far from the Delaware River.
People with questions about friends and family who may have been on the train should call the Amtrak Incident Hotline at 800-523-9101. Amtrak also has established a Family Assistance Center.
With Post Wires