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| A firefighter climbs into the wreck of a Metrolink passenger train that derailed, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015, in Oxnard, Calif. Three cars of the Metrolink train tumbled onto their sides, injuring dozens of people in agricultural country 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that at least 30 people were injured. |
OXNARD, Calif.
(AP) -- A commuter train bound for Los Angeles derailed before dawn
Tuesday in a fiery collision with a pickup truck abandoned by its driver
after it got stuck on the tracks.
There was a
loud boom and the screech of brakes before three of the train's five
cars toppled over, injuring 28 people, four critically.
"It
seemed like an eternity while we were flying around the train.
Everything was flying," said passenger Joel Bingham. "A brush of death
definitely came over me."
Lives were likely
saved by passenger cars designed to absorb a crash that were purchased
after a deadly collision a decade ago, Metrolink officials said. The
four passenger cars remained largely intact as did the locomotive.
Police
found the disoriented driver of the demolished Ford F-450 pickup truck
about a mile or two from the crossing, said Jason Benites, an assistant
chief of the Oxnard Police Department.
The
driver, Jose Alejandro Sanchez Ramirez, 54, of Yuma, Arizona, was
arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run, Benites said at an
afternoon news conference.
Sanchez Ramirez was
hauling a trailer to deliver produce and told police he tried to turn
right at an intersection but turned prematurely onto the tracks and got
stuck. He was hospitalized for observation.
The crossing has been the scene of many collisions over the years.
The
train, the first of the morning on the Ventura route, had just left its
second stop of Oxnard on its way to downtown Los Angeles, about 65
miles away, when it struck the truck around 5:45 a.m. There were 48
passengers aboard and three crew members, who were all injured.
The
engineer saw the abandoned vehicle and hit the brakes, but there wasn't
enough time to stop, Oxnard Fire Battalion Chief Sergio Martinez said.
Bingham
said the lights went out when the train fell over. He was banged up
from head to toe but managed to find an escape for himself and others
where the train was resting above an indentation in the ground.
"I was just shaking," he said. "I opened the window and told everybody, `Come to my voice.'"
Firefighters
set up red, yellow and green tarps to categorize people according to
their injuries. Many of the 23 people who weren't injured stood nearby
wrapped in white blankets.
Others were taken to several nearby hospitals and treated for a variety of ailments.
"Patients
have complained of dizziness, of headaches, of lower back pain, of
pains related to being bumped, thrown, hit and so forth," said Dr. Bryan
Wong, chief medical officer at Ventura County Medical Center.
One
patient described how he had been working on his laptop and a moment
later there was a sudden jerking motion that happened so quickly he
wasn't able to grab hold of anything, Wong said. He was violently tossed
against a wall of the train.
The train
typically would be accelerating out of the Oxnard station past verdant
farm fields at about 55 mph, Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson said.
With braking, he estimated it would have hit the truck at between 40 mph
and 55 mph.
The train was pushed by a
locomotive in the rear, allowing trains to change direction without
having to turn around or swap engines. It's a configuration that has
been criticized for putting passengers in a vulnerable position in a
crash.
After such a crash killed 11 people and
injured 180 others in Glendale in 2005, Metrolink invested heavily to
buy passenger cars with collapsible bumpers and other features to absorb
impact.
Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said the Oxnard crash showed the technology worked.
"Safe to say it would have been much worse without it," he said.
The
city of Oxnard has wanted to build a $30 million bridge over the
crossing for 10 years, but is only at the environmental review stage,
said Darren Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County
Transportation Commission.
There have been six
accidents at the crossing in the past seven years, including one in
which a driver accidently turned onto the tracks in 2010 and was struck
by a Metrolink train and injured, according to federal railroad accident
reports. Two people were killed at the crossing last year when a car
struck an Amtrak train.
The driver said he
turned onto the tracks before the crossing arm came down, which occurs
29 seconds before a train arrives. It wasn't clear how long his truck
was stuck before the train hit it.
The
accident on Tuesday happened on the same line as Metrolink's worst
disaster when 25 people were killed Sept. 12, 2008. A commuter train
engineer was texting and ran a red light, striking a Union Pacific
freight train head-on in the San Fernando Valley community of
Chatsworth. More than 100 people were hurt in what was one of the worst
railroad accidents in U.S. history.
The
National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad
Administration were sending investigators to the Tuesday crash in
Oxnard.
The tracks, which are also used by Amtrak and freight trains were shut down.
