4 Dead in Metro-North Train Derailment in the Bronx

A Derailment in the Bronx: Four were killed and more than 60 were injured as a Hudson Line train went off the tracks while rounding a bend just north of the Spuyten Duyvil station.

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: December 1, 2013

Four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx, officials said, in what is believed to be the deadliest train crash in New York City in more than two decades. Sixty-three people were injured, including 11 critically, the authorities said.

By the afternoon, federal investigators had begun what they said would be a 7- to 10-day examination of the circumstances that sent all eight cars of a Hudson Line train heading south from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., careering off the tracks at about 7:20 a.m. just north of the Spuyten Duyvil station near where tracks pass under the Henry Hudson Bridge.

A senior city official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the train operator had told emergency medical workers in the aftermath of the crash that the brakes had failed, but that the operator’s account had not been confirmed. At a news conference Sunday evening, Earl F. Weener of the National Transportation Safety Board said its investigators had yet to interview the operator of the train, who was among those injured, or the rest of the train crew.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called the derailment “obviously a very tragic situation.” Saying “safety is Job 1,” he cautioned commuters not to expect an immediate resolution to the disruption. “I think it’s fair to say that tomorrow the people who use this line should plan on a longer commute,” he said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority identified the four people who were killed as Donna L. Smith, 54, of Newburgh, N.Y.; Jim Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring, N.Y.; James M. Ferrari, 59, of Montrose, N.Y.; and Ahn Kisook, 35, of Queens.

A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the progress of the investigation said that none of those critically injured in the crash appeared likely to die.

Three of the people who died had been thrown from the train during the derailment, said Edward S. Kilduff, the New York Fire Department’s chief of department.

Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said that there were about 100 people on the train, and the crash could have been much worse if there had been more passengers.

“On a work day, fully occupied, it would have been a tremendous disaster,” he said.

The transportation authority said that the train was being pushed by a locomotive at the rear, propelling the cars southward, when the head cars derailed. The train operator has been with Metro-North for about 20 years, an agency spokeswoman said, and the train had three conductors in its crew.

The transportation authority said that the train’s “black box” could yield additional information about the crash.

The senior city official said that it appeared that the front cars had flipped after coming off the rails and that on at least one of the cars, all of the windows on one side of the carriage were gone.

The curve where the train derailed had a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, said Mr. Weener, of the safety board. The stretch of track just before the curve has a limit of 70 mphHe said investigators would examine the track, the equipment and the signal system, and also review the actions of the operator, William Rockefeller.

“Our mission is to not just understand what happened but why it happened with the intent of preventing it form happening again,” Mr. Weener said.

Joel Zaritsky had just fallen asleep in the fourth car of the train when the train started to roll over and landed on its side, he said.

“People were screaming,” he said on Sunday morning as he traveled to the hospital. “I found myself thrown to the other side of the train.”

Mr. Zaritsky, who lives in Poughkeepsie and was heading to New York for a convention, said his hand was cut and he was very bruised.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “I’m very happy to be alive.”

Around 1 p.m., the National Transportation Safety Board said that a team had arrived in New York to investigate the derailment.

The scene was a dramatic start to the final day of the holiday weekend. Rescue workers from the Police and Fire Departments converged in large numbers and lowered stretchers into the train cars, which were lying on their sides; one car was just above the water’s edge. Firefighters could be seen cutting their way into the damaged cars with electric saws. Helicopters hovered above and diving teams checked for bodies underwater.

Many local residents at the scene described being awakened by a prolonged crashing sound. Some said it was a quick series of booms and then they saw several train cars on their sides away from the tracks.

Michael Keaveney, 22, a security worker who lives in a co-op apartment building overlooking the crash site, said the crash awoke him and that when he looked out his window, “I thought I was still dreaming.”

Several crashed cars lay on their sides for about 10 minutes, he said, with no visible commotion. “They were trapped inside the cars,” he said of the passengers, until emergency responders arrived.

Firefighters arrived and climbed onto the toppled cars with ladders, opened the passenger doors and lowered ladders into the car and “started pulling people out,” said Kevin Farrell, 28, a hospital administrator who lives in a co-op building overlooking the crash site. He said he watched passengers being helped out with arms in splints or other minor injuries, and several of them were taken by stretchers. 

Responders rushed the passengers to ambulances through a section of a chain-link fence that they had removed.

Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, who represents the area and was at the scene, said the accident was “certainly the worst one on this line” and added that it occurred on a curve that is usually taken at low speed. “Trains generally slow to a crawl,” he said.

The train was the 5:54 a.m. out of Poughkeepsie, and was due at Grand Central Terminal at 7:43 a.m.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not appear at a pair of news conferences during the day or visit the scene of the accident in the Bronx. A spokesman for the mayor’s office did not respond to questions about his whereabouts.

At the John F. Kennedy Educational Complex, a number of schools located near the river, officials helped families to locate relatives who may have been on the train. “My brother was on that train,” said a man arriving at the school. He emerged two hours later, looking distraught, and drove away. Officials said that anyone who thinks they might have a relative involved in the crash should call 1-800-METRO-INFO.

It had already been a difficult year for Metro-North, which has had a reputation as one of the country’s most reliable railroads.

In September, a power failure in Mount Vernon, N.Y., upended service on the New Haven line, leading the authority to take the rare step of offering credits to affected riders.

On May 17, two trains on the New Haven line collided during the Friday evening rush after one derailed near Fairfield, Conn. At least 70 people were injured.

Less than two weeks later, a track foreman was struck and killed in West Haven, Conn. The National Transportation Safety Board said in an “urgent safety recommendation” that a trainee rail traffic controller had opened a section of track without proper clearance. It was the first time since 2009 that a Metro-North worker had been fatally struck by a train.

The recent episodes have occurred at a particularly trying time for the railroad. The agency, brought under the auspices of the transportation authority in 1983, has endured a spate of departures that have left several positions either vacant or filled by less experienced employees.

Retirements of high-level employees have been common, officials said, because retirees can receive maximum pension payments after 30 years of service.

Stretches of track along the Hudson line have also had a checkered history. In July, service on the line was stymied after a freight train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station, snarling travel in parts of the Northeast for days. Two other freight train derailments occurred in the early 1980s. No deaths were reported in those episodes, which also affected commuter transit into and out of the city.

In 1882, a deadly collision between two passenger trains occurred on the tracks outside Spuyten Duyvil. Train cars burst into flames and as many as nine people died, according to reports at the time.

State Senator Charles J. Fuschillo, Jr., a Republican from Long Island and the chairman of the Transportation Committee, called on federal officials to conduct a comprehensive review of track conditions in the metropolitan area, citing numerous derailments in the region over the past two years.

“It is important that the entire regional track infrastructure be examined to identify any chronic issues that have led to past derailments or could lead to future derailments in order to ensure the safety of the millions of people who use the trains every single day,” Mr. Fuschillo said in a statement.

Sunday’s derailment was believed to be the deadliest train accident in New York City since 1991, when five people were killed and more than 150 were injured after a subway trainderailed in Lower Manhattan.

Emilie Miyauchi, 28, was heading into the city for brunch on Sunday morning. “All things normal until about two seconds before the train derailed,” she said. “And I just felt like we were going fast enough to feel out of control. And then we were really lurching sideways.” Ms. Miyauchi, who was not hurt, was able to climb out of a broken window.

Ryan Kelly, 26, of Yorktown Heights, was traveling into the city on the train on Sunday morning for his job at Century 21 in TriBeCa. He was listening to Christmas music on his headphones and had fallen asleep when the train began to tilt over and he heard a screeching sound, he said.

“I grabbed the seat and got thrown into the shelf where you put your stuff,” he said. “I hooked my hand in there and shielded my face with the other hand.”

There were five people on his car, and one was taken out lying on a board, he said. Mr. Kelly injured his hand and his bicep.

There was “dirt and soot everywhere,” he said.

“It was right out of a movie,” he said. “You get on the train every morning, and you don’t expect that to happen.”

Reporting was contributed by Annie Correal, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Joseph Goldstein, Thomas Kaplan, Corey Kilgannon and Michael Schwirtz.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/nyregion/metro-north-derailment.html