- Witness: There was a thump, an explosion, then we fell over and everything went flying
- The driver of a pickup is arrested, suspected of hit and run
Some of
the Metrolink cars in the crash were equipped with collision energy
management technology -- implemented after a 2008 Chatsworth,
California, crash between a freight train and a Metrolink commuter train
that left 25 people dead.
No one died
in this wreck, which happened before sunrise when the driver of a
produce truck allegedly mistook the train tracks for the road and tried
to turn onto them. But at least 30 people were injured, including four
in critical condition.
The train cars are relatively new, and the safety features are much better at absorbing the impact of a crash than older trains.
"We
can safely say that the technology worked," Metrolink spokesman Jeff
Lustgarten told reporters. "It minimized the impact of what (could have
been) a very serious collision. It would have been much worse without
it."
The front end of the car that hit the truck is designed to crumple and disperse the energy of the collision, he said.
The
train cars are equipped with windows that emergency personnel can
easily remove to evacuate passengers, he said. An hour after the crash,
"a vast majority, if not all" of the passengers had been evacuated, and
the injured were treated on the scene or transferred to hospitals.
Lustgarten
said all of the service's cab cars -- which have a compartment for an
engineer -- and two-thirds of its passenger cars have the new
technology.
The National Transportation
Safety Board will try to determine how fast the train was going when it
approached the 1-ton Ford F-450 truck and its trailer. The agency said
the train could have been going as fast as 79 mph during that part of
its trip, and the truck was pushed about 300 feet.
NTSB board member Robert
Sumwalt said the train's event data recorder has been retrieved and will
be downloaded by Wednesday. The device logs the train's speed, its
braking and the throttle position.
The driver of the train, who was in the cab car, was able to hit the brakes and sound a horn, Lustgarten said.
The
train wasn't equipped with positive train control, which can
automatically stop a train. Lustgarten said Metrolink was already
planning to add the technology within months.
Truck driver found a mile away
The
incident occurred just before 5:45 a.m. between the cities of Oxnard
and Camarillo. Authorities said the 54-year-old produce truck driver
from Arizona turned onto the tracks instead of at the highway
intersection just beyond.
Some time
after the accident, a police officer driving near the scene of the
accident spotted the driver walking along a road 1.6 miles away and
stopped to talk to him, Oxnard Assistant Police Chief Jason Benites
said.
He said the driver, Jose Alejandro Sanchez Ramirez, was disoriented. He was hospitalized and questioned by investigators.
Web Exclusive: Inside the Oxnard train derailment 03:17
Benites
said the driver, who works for a company in Yuma, had been arrested on
suspicion of felony hit and run. It appeared the driver had abandoned
the vehicle and walked away from the scene. As part of their
investigation, police were trying to determine whether the driver had
been drinking, Benites indicated.
Authorities
said 28 people were taken by ambulance to the hospital, and two people
who initially refused help later went to hospitals for injuries,
The
produce truck, which was hauling a trailer carrying welding equipment,
was "fully engulfed" in flames, according to the California Highway
Patrol.
Four cars derailed, leaving three on their side, the NTSB said.
Lights went out, stuff went flying
Joel Bingham was sitting in the second car when he ...
A man who was sitting in the second car told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that he grabbed onto a pole during the crash.
Oxnard crash survivor: Train went 60 mph on its side 04:45
"I
flipped around a little like a flag," Joel Bingham said. He knew the
passengers were in trouble when he felt a thump then saw the truck blow
up outside his window. The train continued through the crossing then
turned on its side.
"The lights went
out and stuff started flying everywhere," he said. Bingham, who said he
works on trains, said he removed a safety window and called for others
to come in the darkness to the sound of his voice.
He praised the first responders.
"Everything went as good as it could," he said.
The
accident occurred at a crossing where two people died in June and where
the city of Oxnard wants to build a bridge over the tracks, Mayor Tim
Flynn said.
Witness: 'I just saw the huge fireball' 03:53
But
the $30 million cost is a lot for a city his size, he told CNN's "The
Lead With Jake Tapper." He called on Congress for some funding help for
this crossing and others throughout the United States.
The
NTSB said Tuesday than more than 2,000 crossing grade accidents occur
each year and 239 people were killed in such incidents last year.
"We
are very concerned about grade crossings, and we intend to use this
accident and others (like a deadly one in New York earlier this month)
to learn from it to keep it from happening again," Sumwalt of the NTSB
said.
In the New York crash, six people died when a passenger train hit an SUV on the tracks near Valhalla. The collision caused a fire that burned the SUV and the first train car.
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