NOTE: Those attempting to contact travelers on the train ought to call the Amtrak Hotline at 1-800-523-9101.
At least five people were killed and more than 100 individuals hurt after an Amtrak train, conveying 238 travelers and five crew members, wrecked and moved onto its side in the Port Richmond segment of Philadelphia Tuesday night, as indicated by authorities.
Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter told a late-night news meeting that five people had died and that six of the harmed were in critical condition.
“It is an absolute, disasterous mess,” Nutter said. “I’ve never seen anything so devastating.”
Officials have not yet released the identities of the dead.
“I’ve never seen anything so crushing,” said Philadelphia Fire Department Deputy Commissioner Jesse Wilson. The cars are “in pretty bad shape. You can see that they’re totally, totally wrecked from the track. They’ve been wrecked totally. The aluminum shell has been devastated and they’ve been overturned totally.”
The incident required a 4-alert reaction, including 120 firefighters and 200 cops.
After the derailment, Nutter said, seven cars, including the engine, were “in disorder.” They were “overturned, on their sides … ripped apart,” he said. They were in “horrible shape,” Nutter said at the news meeting. Some media reports demonstrated that cars also derailed.
A percentage of the harmed were liberated after people on call remove them of the destruction, authorities said. Around 150 police and 125 fire work force were on the scene, Nutter said.
He likewise emphasized that accessible data was “very preliminary.”
Witnesses said the accident clearly happened on a curving segment of track. The tracks make a 45 degree turn in the region of the accident site, which is around seven or eight miles from the 30th Street Statio
Local resident David Hernandez, whose house is near to the tracks, heard the derailment.
“It seemed like a pack of shopping baskets colliding with one another,” he said.
The smashing sound kept going a couple seconds, he said, and afterward there was disorder and shouting.
Federal Railroad Administration records indicate there have been nine Amtrak derailments so far in 2015, contrasted with 28 in in all of 2014 and 25 in 2013.