A passenger train traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago collided with a dump truck and derailed Monday in remote rural Missouri, killing three people and injuring dozens more, authorities said.
Two of the people who died were on the Amtrak train and one was in the truck, said Missouri State Highway Patrol spokesman Cpl. Justin Dunn said. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured, the patrol said, but hospitals reported receiving more than 40 patients from the crash and expected more.
The Amtrak Southwest Chief was carrying about 243 passengers and 12 crew members when the collision occurred near Mendon at a rural intersection on a gravel road with no lights or electronic controls, authorities said. Seven cars derailed, the Highway Patrol said.
It’s too early to speculate on why the truck was on the tracks, said Jennifer Homendy, president of the National Transportation Safety Board. A team of investigators from the NTSB will arrive Tuesday, she said. Trains won’t be able to run on the tracks for a “matter of days” while they gather evidence, she added.
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At one point, helicopter video from the KMBC-TV site in Kansas City showed train cars from the side as emergency services used ladders to climb onto one of them. Six medical helicopters parked nearby were waiting to transport patients.
About 20 state and local law enforcement agencies, ambulance services, fire departments and helicopter medical services responded, Dunn said. First responders arrived within 20 minutes of receiving a 911 call, she said.
Passenger Robert Nightingale, an art gallery owner in Taos, New Mexico, said he was falling asleep in his bedroom when the crash happened.
“Everything started to go in slow motion,” he told CNN, describing how the train swayed before falling on its side.
Nightingale was able to get out of the side of the car.
“We all sat there in shock,” he said.
Other passengers on the train included 16 youth and eight adults from two Boy Scout troops traveling home to Appleton, Wisconsin, after a backcountry excursion at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. No one in the group was seriously injured, said Scott Armstrong, director of national media relations for the Boy Scouts of America. Scouts administered first aid to several injured passengers, including the driver of the dump truck, Armstrong said.
High school students from Pleasant Ridge High School in Easton, Kansas, who were on their way to a Future Business Leaders of America conference in Chicago, were also on board, Superintendent Tim Beying told The Star.
It was Amtrak’s second collision in as many days. Three people were killed Sunday afternoon when an Amtrak commuter train crashed into a car in Northern California, authorities said.
The Southwest Chief takes approximately two days to travel from Los Angeles to Chicago, picking up passengers at intermediate stops. Mendon, with a population of about 160, is about 84 miles (135 kilometers) northeast of Kansas City.
Associated Press reporters Margaret Stafford in Liberty, Mo., Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, SD, Grant Schulte in Omaha, Neb., and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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Reference-globalnews.ca