Train carrying 139 passengers and eight crew collided with freight train at about 2.45am

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An Amtrak passenger train hit a freight train parked on a side track in South Carolina in the early morning darkness on Sunday, killing two Amtrak crew members and injuring more than 110 people, authorities said.

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The dead were identified as engineer Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, Georgia, and conductor Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Florida. Lexington County coroner Margaret Fisher’s voice caught as she released their names.

“Any time you have anything that happens like that, you expect more fatalities,” Fisher said. “But God blessed us, and we only had the two.”

It was the third deadly wreck involving Amtrak in less than two months.

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.

On 18 December, 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. The train was going nearly 80mph, more than twice the speed limit.

Early on Sunday, the Silver Star service was en route from New York to Miami with nearly 150 people aboard around 2.45am when it plowed into the CSX train at an estimated 59mph, South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, said. The crash happened around a switchyard about 10 miles south of Columbia.

The governor said investigators had yet to determine how the Amtrak train ended up on that stretch of track.

“The CSX was on the track it was supposed to be on,” McMaster said.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to the scene.

Amtrak said that it was “deeply saddened” and was cooperating fully with the NTSB. It did not address the cause of the crash but said CSX maintains all the tracks and signal systems where the accident happened and controls access to the sidings and yards.

CSX did not immediately return requests for comment.

The force of the crash dislodged a seat and knocked it on to passenger Tronia Dorsey’s legs, said her son, Andre Neblett, who had spoken to her. The 43-year-old woman, who escaped with minor scratches and bruises, described a terrifying scene inside the dark compartment, with people screaming and babies wailing, he said.

“It was chaos,” Andre Neblett said after driving in from North Carolina to retrieve his mother’s suitcase from a Red Cross shelter. “She said she was just waiting on somebody to get to her.”

In all, McMaster said, 116 people were taken to four hospitals. At least three patients were hospitalized in critical or serious condition, with nearly all the rest treated for minor injuries such as cuts, bruises and whiplash, authorities said.

Palmetto Health emergency room doctor Eric Brown said so many passengers were hurt that they were brought in on two buses, and a tent that had been set up as a waiting room to keep people separate from flu patients was turned into a triage area.

The locomotives of both trains were left crumpled, the Amtrak engine on its side. One car in the middle of the Amtrak train was snapped in half, forming a V off to one side of the tracks.

“It’s a horrible thing to see, to understand the force involved,” McMaster said.

Many passengers were asleep when the train began shaking violently and then slammed to a halt, passenger Derek Pettaway told CBS. “You knew we’d hit something or we’d derailed,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emergency responders at the scene. Photograph: Randall Hill/Reuters

Elliot Smith told the State newspaper of Columbia he was staying with a friend when they heard what sounded like a propane tank exploding. “The sound was so loud, you instantly knew it was bad,” he said.

Smith said he and his friend saw passengers limping along the tracks, while others tried to get everyone out of the cars.

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Amtrak officials gathered up luggage and other belongings and within hours put passengers aboard buses to their destinations. Those who were not hurt were taken to a shelter set up at a middle school; local businesses provided coffee and breakfast.

“We know they are shaken up quite a bit,” sheriff’s spokesman Adam Myrick said. “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.”

Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said on Sunday the nation’s railroads must be made safer, declaring: “Business as usual must end.” He said proven technology, including positive train control, cannot continue to be delayed.



Positive train control is GPS-based technology that can automatically slow or stop speeding trains. Regulators have been pressing for years for such equipment and some railroads have installed it but the deadline has been pushed back repeatedly at the industry’s request.

The latest wreck again raised criticism about the safety culture of the nation’s passenger railway. Crashes are “becoming almost like an epidemic for Amtrak”, said Najmedin Meshkati, a USC engineering professor who has studied positive train control.