A city train in New York derailed at a downtown Brooklyn terminal during Wednesday’s morning, injuring over 100 commuters in the metropolitan area. This is second major rail accident since late September. Soon after the incident, emergency crews reached the Atlantic Terminal wherein Long Island Rail Road train went off the tracks inside the busy transportation center at 8:20 a.m. local time.
Significantly, some of the injuries were life-threatening. About 11 people were sent to the hospital, said Deputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue at a briefing at the accident site. Approximately 700 people were on the train, he said.
The accident took place as the train arriving from the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway doesn’t stop punctually. Although it was moving at a reasonable speed, the train derailed after striking a bumping block, said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The fire department said on Twitter that about 103 people were wounded in the accident. Besides, the front two cars of the six-carriage train were thoroughly damaged along with station’s partitions and bumping block that prevents railway vehicles from going past the end of a section of track.
The scene of blood and chaos following the derailment was terrifying said commuters.
According to Tom Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – the agency that runs the railroad, the engineer was most likely to be responsible for failing to stop the train before it hit the bumper. The train was moving between 10 and 15 miles per hour as it approached the bumper.
“At that speed, it’s pretty much the locomotive engineer’s responsibility to stop the train,” Prendergast said.
Recently, a New Jersey Transit train crashed into a terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey. The incident killed one woman and injured 114 people, including the engineer in late September.
