Two dead, 116 injured as Amtrak carrying nearly 150 from New York hits freight train, derails in South Carolina

New York Daily News, The (NY)

Feb. 04--Two Amtrak employees were killed and another 116 people were injured when their Miami-bound train slammed into a freight train and derailed early Sunday in central South Carolina, officials said.

Passengers aboard Train 91 were rattled at about 2:35 a.m. when it hit a stationary CSX train just south of Columbia, authorities said.

"It appears to me that the CSX was on the track that it was supposed to be on," South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster told reporters noting federal investigators will make a final determination. "It appears that Amtrak was on the wrong track."

He didn't say how fast the Amtrak train was going, indicating it was possible moving as fast as 59 mph.

Engineer Michael Kempf, 54, and conductor Michael Cella, 36, were identified by the Lexington County coroner as the deceased.

It was the third deadly accident for Amtrak in the last two months.

Amtrak President Richard Anderson said CSX controlled the signal system on that stretch of rail, which was down at the time.

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 National Transportation Safety Board.

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 Lexington County spokesman said 116 people were treated for injuries, which local media said ranged from bruises to broken bones.

The train, which left from New York's Penn Station, had 139 passengers and eight crew members at the time of the crash.

All passengers were cleared out by 6:30 a.m.

Those who weren't injured were escorted to a middle school in Pine Ridge, S.C., where they took shelter.

"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 Derek Pettaway, who was headed for Orlando and was treated for whiplash.

"Nobody was panicking," Pettaway told CNN. "I think people were more in shock than anything else."

President Trump was also briefed on the accident during a weekend stay at his Mar-a-Lago resort near Palm Beach, FL.

"My thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims involved in this mornings train collision in South Carolina. Thank you to our incredible First Responders for the work they've done!" Trump later tweeted.

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 GOP Congress members and their families struck a garbage truck in Crozet, Va., killing one person on the vehicle.

And three people were killed in December, when a barrelling Amtrak train went off the rails in Washington state.

An initial report released by the NTSB in December indicated the train's engineer remarked on the train going nearly 80 mph on a curve where the speed limit was 30 mph.

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