3rd fatal Amtrak train crash in less than 2 months
Train carriages lie smashed and derailed yesterday in the United States near Cayce, South Carolina.
A crash in the United States between an Amtrak passenger train and a CSX freight train near South Carolina’s capital killed two people and injured more than 100 early yesterday, authorities said.
This was the third deadly wreck involving Amtrak in less than two months.
Amtrak’s Silver Star was heading from New York to Miami with eight crew members and about 140 passengers when the crash happened around 2:45am near Cayce.
Margaret Fisher, Lexington county coroner, said the two people killed were on the Amtrak train.
A total of 116 people were taken to hospitals for treatment, many of them with “minor injuries,” South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said.
The cause of the wreck was under investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators.
The crash happened by a rail yard about 16 kilometers south of Columbia, where several track spurs split off for freight cars to be unloaded.
Authorities said they haven’t determined if both trains were moving at the time.
The Amtrak train’s lead engine and several passenger cars derailed, Amtrak said. TV footage showed the locomotive on its side, its front crumpled.
“We know they are shaken up quite a bit. We know this is like nothing else they have ever been through. So we wanted to get them out of the cold, get them out of the weather — get them to a warm place,” sheriff’s spokesman Adam Myrick said.
On Wednesday, a chartered Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a strategy retreat hit a garbage truck at a crossing in rural Virginia, killing one person in the truck and injuring six others.
On December 18, an Amtrak train ran off the rails along a curve during its inaugural run on a route south of Tacoma, Washington, killing three people and injuring dozens.
