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Seven Dead, Over 200 Injured as Travelers Scramble After Amtrak Derailment

Amtrak Northeast Corridor
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Amtrak Northeast Corridor

WASHINGTON (AP) - Thousands of travelers were scrambling and commuters were re-thinking their work weeks Wednesday after a deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia shut down a critical section of the busiest railroad in North America.

The crash choked Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which carries more than 750,000 passengers a day between eight states and the District of Columbia, on Amtrak and eight commuter rail lines.

Amtrak warned there would be no service until further notice between Philadelphia and New York, and that service elsewhere in the region would have to be modified.  Most commuter railroads in the Northeast were operating normally, although many lacked the usual Amtrak connections. Four freight rail operators also share the railroad.

"There is no circumstance under which there would be any Amtrak service this week through Philadelphia," the city's mayor, Michael Nutter, said after viewing mangled tracks and downed wires at the crash scene.

Some 2,200 trains a day normally use the Northeast Corridor, according to the railroad's Infrastructure Operations and Advisory Commission.

Amtrak said it alone carried 11.6 million passengers through the Northeast Corridor in fiscal year 2014, its highest ridership year yet.

The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.

A total of seven people were killed as result of the crash and over 200 injured.  

Travelers

Penn Station, New York
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Penn Station, New York

Many travelers found themselves offloaded far from their destinations Wednesday morning. Airlines added flights and bus lines said they would honor Amtrak tickets, but some struggled to find seats.

"I've been standing here in a daze, trying to figure out what to do," Bill Atkins, 48, said at Penn Station in Manhattan. The attorney was trying to get home to Tysons Corner, Virginia, after a New York business trip, and didn't learn about the crash until he woke up Wednesday. "I'm going to try to fly," he decided.

But there were no flights available from LaGuardia or Kennedy, so he was thinking about taking NJ Transit as his next step. "I think I'm going to get to the Newark Airport and just stand in line."

Wednesday afternoon flights between New York and Washington quickly sold out on Delta Air Lines, which was considering adding flights and switching to larger jets in both directions, spokesman Anthony Black said. American Airlines, which normally flies the other shuttle route through its US Airways brand, was adding two roundtrip shuttle flights later Wednesday.

NJ Transit, Greyhound and Megabus were honoring Amtrak tickets. Greyhound said it added 16 more scheduled trips between New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Megabus said it was working to add trips on Wednesday and accommodate an increased demand in coming days.

Union Station in Washington D.C.
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Union Station in Washington D.C.

At Union Station in Washington, dozens of people waited to talk with Amtrak agents as electronic boards showed trains to Boston and New York cancelled.

"We want to get home," said Wilhelmina Green, 66, who boarded a New York-bound train in South Carolina Tuesday night with her sister Dorothy Archbold-Wright, 68. They expected to arrive Wednesday morning, but were offloaded in Washington instead.

Several dozen others waited in other lines to get bus tickets as television screens showed images of the derailed train.

"My only disappointment with Amtrak is that they just leave you hanging," said Jane Scarfo, whose train trip from Florida to New York suddenly ended in Washington.

Several passengers complained that Amtrak didn't help them make alternate arrangements. Scarfo said she was eventually able to book a Greyhound bus for later in the day.

It wasn't clear Wednesday how long it will take before trains can run again through the accident scene, and what the economic impact will be therefore. The commission estimated that an unexpected loss of the entire system for just one day could cost the economy nearly $100 million in extra transportation costs and lost productivity.

Mayor Michael Nutter

Mayor Michael Nutter
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official photo
Mayor Michael Nutter

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter says he's frustrated to learn how fast the Amtrak train was going in a 50 mph zone when it derailed, killing seven people.
 
National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt says the train was traveling at 106 mph when the engineer hit the brakes Tuesday night.
 
Nutter says part of the investigative focus has to be on what the engineer was doing.
 
Gov. Tom Wolf has praised the city's response to the derailment.
 
NTSB

A National Transportation Safety Board official says the engineer of an Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia applied the emergency brakes moments before the crash.
 
National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said Wednesday that the train was traveling at 106 mph when the engineer hit the brakes Tuesday night.
 
The derailment took place as the train entered a curve where the speed limit is 50 mph. The speed limit on the track just prior to the curve is 70 mph.
 
The dead included an employee of The Associated Press and a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The Injuries

A doctor says he was surprised to find out that nearly all the Amtrak crash victims treated at his Philadelphia hospital had rib fractures.
 
Temple University Hospital saw 54 patients from the accident Tuesday night that killed seven people and injured more than 200.
 

Temple's Dr. Herbert Cushing says he expected to see a lot of head trauma but instead the hospital had just one such case.
 
He says the rib fractures tell him the passengers "rattled around in the train cars a lot."
 
Twenty-three patients remained hospitalized Wednesday afternoon at Temple, eight in critical condition. Cushing says he expects those in critical condition "to do just fine."
 
Six bodies were found at the crash site. Cushing says the seventh victim died shortly after midnight at Temple. He was identified as Associated Press employee Jim Gaines of Plainsboro, New Jersey.
 
Video

Amtrak Video
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amtrak video
Amtrak Video

An analysis by The Associated Press of surveillance video just before the deadly crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia indicates it was traveling about 107 miles per hour as it approached a curve where the speed limit was 50 miles per hour.
 
The video shows the train - which was roughly 662 feet long - passes the camera in just over five seconds. But AP found that the surveillance video plays back slightly slower than in real time.
 
So, adjusting for the slower playback puts the train's estimated speed at 107 miles per hour. The surveillance camera was located at a site just before the bend in the tracks.

Engineer Declines Comment

Philadelphia police officials say the engineer of the Amtrak train declined to provide a statement to investigators.
 
They say the engineer also had an attorney when he left a meeting with investigators. The engineer has not yet been identified.
 
Investigators are trying to determine why the train slipped off the tracks while rounding a sharp curve Tuesday night northeast of Philadelphia's city center.
 
Authorities say the locomotive's data recorder has been recovered and that it should yield critical information, including the speed of the train.
 
The speed limit just before the curve was 70 mph and on the curve it was 50 mph.
 

Mid-Shipman Dies in Accident

Justin Zemser
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school photo
Justin Zemser

A 20-year-old U.S. Naval Academy midshipman from New York City is one of the seven people killed in Tuesday's Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia.
 
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus identified the midshipman as Justin Zemser.
 
The popular student leader and athlete was on leave from the Annapolis, Maryland, institution and heading home to Rockaway Beach, New York.
 
Zemser and his family were temporarily forced from the community by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
 
He was elected student government president at Channel View High School and was a two-time letter winner on the school's football team.
 
He played sprint football, a form of the sport for players under 172 pounds, at the Naval Academy.
 
 

AP Employee Killed in Accident

Jim Gaines
Jim Gaines

An Associated Press video software architect is among the seven people killed in the Philadelphia Amtrak train derailment.
 
Jim Gaines, a 48-year-old father of two, had attended meetings in Washington. He was returning home to Plainsboro, New Jersey, when the train derailed Tuesday night. His death was confirmed by his wife, Jacqueline.  
 
Gaines joined the AP in 1998 and was a key factor in nearly all of the news agency's video initiatives, including a service providing live video to hundreds of clients worldwide.
 
Gaines won AP's "Geek of the Month" award in May 2012 for his "tireless dedication and contagious passion" to technological innovation.
 
He was part of a team that won the AP Chairman's Prize in 2006 for developing the agency's Online Video Network.
 
He is also survived by 16-year-old son Oliver and 11-year-old daughter Anushka.
 
 Wells Fargo  

A Wells Fargo senior vice president is one of the seven people killed in Tuesday night's Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia.
 
 Company spokeswoman Elise Wilkinson confirmed Abid Gilani's death.
 
 According to his LinkedIn page, Gilani had been with Wells Fargo in New York about a year.
 
 At least two people are still missing.

Rachel Jacobs
 

Rachel Jacobs
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family photo
Rachel Jacobs

The family of a New York woman who was head of a Philadelphia educational software startup has confirmed that she was one of seven people killed in the derailment of an Amtrak train.
 
Rachel Jacobs' family called her death "an unthinkable tragedy" and said in a statement it "cannot imagine life without her."
 
The 39-year-old mother of two and ApprenNet CEO had been traveling home to New York.
 
Jacobs previously worked at McGraw-Hill, leading the expansion of the company's career-learning business into China, India and the Middle East. She also worked at Ascend Learning, another education technology firm.
 
Her family called her "a wonderful mother, daughter, sister, wife and friend."
 
 
 

 

 

    

Don Rush is the News Director at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.