Two dead, 116 injured as Amtrak carrying nearly 150 from New York hits freight train, derails in South Carolina
Passengers aboard Train 91 were rattled at about
"It appears to me that the CSX was on the track that it was supposed to be on,"
He didn't say how fast the Amtrak train was going, indicating it was possible moving as fast as 59 mph.
Engineer
It was the third deadly accident for Amtrak in the last two months.
Amtrak President
Instead, Anderson said, trains were being manually routed by dispacters. He stopped short, however, of saying if that contributed to the crash, deferring it to the
Photos showed the mangled front of the CSX locomotive, which officials said was empty at the time of the collision.
"That's about as forceful you can get," McMaster said, adding the CSX train was "barely recognizable."
"It's quite a crash," he said.
The Amtrak engine -- along with several of its cars -- was thrown from the rails and landed on its side.
"This is bad. Really bad," wrote Twitter user jdspires, alongside a video showing the massive emergency response at the site of the wreckage.
"So many ambulances," he said in another post.
A
The train, which left from
All passengers were cleared out by
Those who weren't injured were escorted to a middle school in
"Their spirits were unusually good," McMaster said. "I know there's one woman there on her way to her husband's funeral."
Many of the passengers were reportedly jolted from their sleep by the accident.
One of them was
"Nobody was panicking," Pettaway told CNN. "I think people were more in shock than anything else."
"My thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims involved in this mornings train collision in
About 5,000 gallons of diesel poured out of the CSX train, officials said, but caused no public threat.
The derailment marks the second incident for Amtrak in the last week.
A chartered train carrying dozens of
And three people were killed in December, when a barrelling Amtrak train went off the rails in
An initial report released by the
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