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Calif. rail agency: Engineer's error caused wreck
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-14 19:28 LOS ANGELES - A commuter train engineer who ran a stop signal was blamed Saturday for the nation's deadliest rail disaster in 15 years, a wreck that killed 25 people and left such a mass of smoldering, twisted metal that it took nearly a day to recover all the bodies.
A preliminary investigation found that "it was a Metrolink engineer that failed to stop at a red signal and that was the probable cause" of Friday's collision with a freight train in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said.
The engineer was among the dead, said National Transportation Safety Board member Kitty Higgins, who later cautioned that it was too early to establish the cause of the accident. The engineer's name had not been released late Saturday. Many of the 25 people killed had been in the front car of the Metrolink train, which was crushed like an accordion in the wreck. A total of 135 people were injured, with 81 transported to hospitals in serious or critical condition. There was no overall condition update available Saturday, but a telephone survey of five hospitals found nine of 34 patients still critical. Many were described as having crush injuries. An engineer and a conductor aboard one of two freight train locomotives also were injured. Firefighter Searcy Jackson III, a 20-year veteran and one of the first to pull bodies from the wreckage, said he had never seen such devastation. The 50-year-old said his team pulled one living passenger from the train and cut the mangled metal to remove about a half-dozen bodies. "We saw bodies where the metal had been pushed together and ... we cut them out piece by piece. They were trapped in the metal," said Jackson, 50, who was back at the scene Saturday afternoon. |
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