rescue firegeezer on 14 Sep 2008 02:11 pm
L. A. Train Search Completed
ALL SEARCH AND VICTIM RETRIEVAL AT THE METROLINK train crash in California has been completed. Late Saturday night the fire department announced that there were no more victims remaining in the mangled train cars.
Los Angeles Times
Of the 135 injured, 81 were hospitalized in critical condition. 24 people perished in the crash and one more has died in the hospital bringing the current toll to 25.
The collision occurred on a horseshoe-shaped section of track in Chatsworth at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, near a 500-foot-long tunnel underneath Stoney Point Park. There is a siding at one end of the tunnel where one train can wait for another to pass. The Metrolink train had been signalled to pull into the siding and wait for the freight train to pass going the other direction.
Metrolink officials believe that the engineer failed to acknowledge the signal and continued on the single-lane track. Each train was traveling at approx. 40 mph resulting in an 80 mph impact that drove the passenger locomotive back inside the first rail car where all the carnage occurred.
The locomotive engineer was one of the fatalities. The conductor was injured and is currently being interviewed by police investigators. The three crewmen on the Union Pacific freight train all had injuries but survived.
KCAL Ch. 9 has the latest REPORT.
Los Angeles Times PHOTO GALLERY.
New York Times
The Los Angeles Times has a good story and interview with the first-in fire captain where he tells what he found and his initial size-up along with his reports to dispatch. An excerpt from the article:
The captain was on his radio as they approached. “We are on scene,” Barrios barked into his radio. “We have a train collision.”
The scene started to come into relief. Send five ambulances, he said at first. He got closer and saw the flames. Send 30 firetrucks, he added. Then he was there. The Metrolink engine seemed to be missing. In the head-on crash, a Union Pacific engine had shoved it violently inside the first passenger car, which was lying grotesquely on its side. Two dozen passengers had emerged from the wreckage; some, dazed, were walking in circles against a curtain of black smoke.Barrios made his last request: Send every heavy search-and-rescue unit in the city.
Be sure and read the full story HERE.
