Reuters - A commuter train plowed into a station in New Jersey at
the height of Thursday's morning rush hour, killing at least one person and
injuring more than 100
others as it brought down part of the roof and scattered
debris over the concourse.
Witnesses described terrifying scenes as the front of the
train smashed through the track stop in Hoboken station at high speed and into
the terminal, toppling support columns and creating chaos at one of the busiest
transit hubs in the New York City area.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told a news conference
in Hoboken that one person was killed on the platform by debris from the crash,
and he said 108 people were injured. There were no signs it was anything other
than an accident, he added.
The train's engineer, or driver, was seriously injured and
in a hospital, and was cooperating with law enforcement officials in the
investigation, Christie said.
"We're not going to speculate about the cause of the
accident," he said.
New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo told the news conference
it was obvious the train had come into the station "at too high a rate of
speed," but that it was unclear why.
A couple of hundred emergency workers shuttled in and out
of the station, some carrying the injured on stretchers to waiting ambulances
outside. Dozens of police boats bobbed in the Hudson River alongside the
terminal.
Accounts from officials at two hospitals said some of the
injured were in critical condition. Several passengers were initially trapped
in the wreckage, witnesses and officials said, but they were later freed.
There was no word yet on what caused the crash. Federal investigators
were on the scene.
"The one thing we do know is that obviously this
train that was traveling at a fairly high rate of speed," Christie said in
an interview earlier on Thursday with CNN.
Hoboken, the last stop on the line it serves, lies on the
Hudson's west bank across from New York City. Its station is used by many
commuters traveling into Manhattan from New Jersey and further afield.
Linda Albelli, 62, was sitting in one of the rear cars
when the train approached the station. She said she knew something was wrong a
moment before the impact.
"I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, he's not slowing
up, and this is where we're usually stop,'" Albelli said. "'We're
going too fast,' and with that there was this tremendous crash."
Passengers helped each other onto the platform where the
injured sat on benches as they waited for first responders, said Albelli, who
lives in Closter, New Jersey.
"There were a lot of people who were really
hurt," she said.
'HARD TO BELIEVE'
New Jersey Transit employee Michael Larson was standing
outside the station with blood from one of the injured passengers on the knee
of his pants.
"It's hard to believe ... The whole roof was caved
in," Larson told reporters, looking shocked.
A major transit hub, the historic green-roofed Hoboken
Station is served by NJ Transit commuter trains connecting much of New Jersey
with the country's largest city, as well as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson
subway-like system commonly known as PATH, a light rail service and ferry
service to New York.
Train #1614 was on the Pascack Valley line, which goes
through Northern Bergen County, and had originated at Spring Valley, New York.
It was on track five when it hit the Hoboken terminal building at about 08:45
a.m. EDT.
Mike Scelzl, who was sitting in the train's first car,
said he had not been paying attention when the crash happened. "When we
pulled in, there was screaming. Not screams of hurt but screams of shock,"
he said.
In May 2011, a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
train crashed at Hoboken station, injuring more than 30 people when it hit a
bumping post at the end of the track. An investigation by the National
Transportation Safety Board determined excessive speed was the main cause of
the accident.
An NTSB official said the agency will look at similarities
between that one and Thursday's crash, as well as at positive train control - a
system that is designed to kick in and halt a train if the engineer misses a
stop signal.
Advocates of positive train control cite it for helping to
combat human error, but there have been delays in implementing it more widely.
The Hoboken crash is the latest in a string of fatal train
crashes in the United States. The worst in recent years involved an Amtrak
train that crashed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight people and
injuring more than 200.
Reuters
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