Multiple Deaths in Amtrak Train Derailment Accident in Washington

Authorities say it could take more than a year to understand how the inaugural run of the train carrying 85 passengers and crew members ended in disaster along a new 15-mile (24-kilometer) bypass route. Friends Jim Hamre, 61, and Zack Willhoite, 35, died of brain and skull injuries. Benjamin Gran, 40, died of multiple traumatic injuries. Whimpering in pain, bleeding from head injuries and dazed by the enormity of the crash, victims in the Amtrak train derailment south of Seattle begged 911 dispatchers for help and said "tons of people" had been hurt. Dozens of emergency recordings released Wednesday by South Sound 911 Dispatch provided a vivid account of what happened during the deadly Dec. 18 crash. "My abdomen hurts really bad. I don't feel good," said a crying woman identified as Angela who was bleeding from her head and wailed in panic each time she couldn't find an answer to a dispatcher's questions. "I don't know how old I am off the top of my head. I'm sorry!" A passenger train on a newly opened Amtrak route jumped the tracks on an overpass south of Tacoma on Monday, slamming rail cars into a busy highway, killing at least three people and injuring about 100 others, officials said. The derailment of Amtrak Train No. 501, making the inaugural run of a new service from Seattle to Portland, dropped a 132-ton locomotive in the southbound lanes of the Northwest’s busiest travel corridor, Interstate 5. Two passenger coaches also fell partly in the traffic lanes, and two other coaches were left dangling off the bridge, one of them wedged against a tractor-trailer. On the highway below lay five crumpled cars, two semi trucks and huge chunks of concrete that were ripped away from the damaged overpass. All 12 of the train’s coaches and one of its two engines derailed. The National Transportation Safety Board said at a Monday night briefing that the train had been traveling more than twice the speed limit before it derailed, or at 80 miles per hour instead of the allowable 30 m.p.h. Don Anderson, mayor of Lakewood, about 11 miles northeast of the crash site, said shortly after the wreck that the tragedy "could've been avoided if better choices had been made" about using the route for upgraded passenger service. "Our community was skeptical of the project both from a financial and safety standpoint, primarily a safety standpoint," Anderson said The mayor of a city along a new route taken by the Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state had expressed concerns about the line as long ago as 2013, court records show.

2 Trains Collide In Chicago Injuring 33 People - one train mysteriously unmanned

More than 30 people were seriously injured after a pair of trains collided.

The crash happened just before 8 a.m. at Harlem Avenue and Interstate 290 in suburban Forest Park. A westbound train that stopped at the Harlem station was struck by an out-of-service, unmanned train heading toward the Loop.

Chicago Transit Authority officials reported 33 people, many complaining of severe neck or back pain were transported to nine area hospitals.

Robert Kelly, of Amalgamated Transit Union 308, said it's still unclear what happened and how the train got out of the station. "Both the supervisor in the station at Forest Park and the motorman who was sitting in the station said there was nobody on the train as it went through and collided with the other train," Kelly said. "This is baffling everybody," he said.

Chicago Transit Authority spokesman Brian Steele said there are more questions than answers as staff reviews surveillance video and talks to employees. "We don't know what the circumstances are that led to this train to begin moving on the path that it did," Steele said. "It shouldn't have done so and the question of why is what we're looking into."

"That train never should have made it to the Forest Park station. It should have been tripped in the yard," Kelly said. Someone had to start the train, and even if they bailed out, it had to travel up an incline and pass through three different fail safe systems designed to stop it. The last fail safe is located in the cab itself, designed to alert a motorman of impending danger ahead.

Witnesses said at least one person was taken away on a stretcher, but the CTA tweeted the injuries were "minor." Loyola University Medical Center confirmed they received four patients from the collision but said their injuries were "not serious."

"I went forward and caught the rail," one passenger said. "I jammed my hip, my feet and my leg."

Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park said they were treating two patients in good condition and West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park reported they received one patient in good condition.