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New York train crash kills four, injures dozens

Emergency workers at the scene of a commuter train wreck on December 1, 2013 in the Bronx borough of New York, after it derailed leaving at least four dead/AFP

Emergency workers at the scene of a commuter train wreck on December 1, 2013 in the Bronx borough of New York, after it derailed leaving at least four dead/AFP

NEW YORK, Dec 2 – A train hurtled off the tracks in a New York suburb on Sunday, killing at least four people, injuring dozens and coming perilously close to plunging into a freezing river.

It was still unclear why the train veered off the rails in the Bronx at around 7:20am (1220 GMT) as it headed south to Grand Central Station in Manhattan, sparking a major rescue operation.

The New York Fire Department said four people died, while 11 others were seriously hurt and another 56 suffered minor wounds. Some passengers were “impaled” by debris as train cars flew into the air, officials said, while others had to be cut free from tangled metal.

“People were screaming,” Joel Zaritsky told The New York Times. “I found myself thrown to the other side of the train.”

Many survivors had broken limbs or injuries to their heads or necks, with some being led away with bloodied faces, applying ice packs to try and ease the pain.

Investigators combed the scene and announced that a “multi-disciplinary team” would probe everything from the condition of the tracks to the signalling systems and the brakes.

“Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, with the intent of preventing it from happening again,” Earl Weener, a National Transportation Safety Board official, told reporters.

Weener said the so-called black box or “event recorder” had been recovered and that data had been downloaded from the locomotive but not yet analyzed.

The black box “will say how fast the train was travelling and whether or not the brakes were applied,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in earlier remarks to broadcaster MSNBC.

Speaking alongside Weener, Cuomo said a crane was on its way to the scene to right the derailed train cars.

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That, according to Weener, was to check for any more victims and stop fuel from leaking from the locomotive.

The train crew and conductor would be interviewed in the coming days, Weener said, adding that he expected investigators to be at the scene for up to 10 days.

The Times, citing a senior city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, reported that the train operator told first responders the brakes had failed but said this account had not been confirmed.

At least one passenger said the train was going faster than normal as it moved along a curve on a downward slope leading into Spuyten Duyvil station, just north of Manhattan.

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