An Amtrak passenger train derailed after crashing into a tractor trailer truck in North Carolina on Monday, sending some 40 passengers to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, state officials said.
The train, carrying 220 passengers and crew, was traveling from Charlotte, N.C., to New York when it hit a truck hauling heavy equipment that had apparently gotten stuck on tracks in Halifax County near the Virginia border, said Heather Joyner, communications director of the county’s Emergency 911 service.
The train’s engine and baggage car derailed, but those transported to local hospitals escaped with minor injuries, the North Carolina Department of Transportation said in a statement.
The truck driver was believed to be uninjured, Joyner said.
Amtrak said in a statement that it was investigating the accident.
“Our concerns are with passengers and crew,” it said on Twitter.
In a call reporting the collision to emergency dispatchers, an unidentified woman described the scene in a calm but shocked tone.
“Oh my God, I mean the 18-wheeler is completely turned over,” she said. “The Amtrak is derailed. It’s still upright.”
The woman told the dispatcher the railroad crossroad lights were still blinking.
“I mean, he was stuck on the track,” she said, referring to the truck driver. “He couldn’t get the truck off.”
Leslie Cipriani, who shot a video of the collision with her cellphone while sitting in her car at a stop sign, said the tractor-trailer had backed up several times as the truck’s driver tried to make a difficult right-hand turn across the tracks. While the driver was still attempting the maneuver, Cipriani heard the sound of the oncoming train and saw the crossing arms hit the tractor-trailer.
“I saw him jump out of the truck when he knew he couldn’t beat it. … I heard the train noise and thought, oh my God, it’s going to happen,” she said.
A law enforcement officer was blocking the intersection before the collision, possibly trying to help the truck driver make the turn. Asked if it seemed that the officer knew the train was coming, Cipriani replied: “That’s what it looked like.”
Passenger Charlotte Story, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told WRAL television that she never heard a whistle and could not tell if the train had tried to slow down before the crash.
“There was a massive jerk and we were kind of thrown forward a little bit, and the train came to a sudden stop,” she said, according to the television report.
It was the latest in a series of wrecks involving passenger trains. including two last month: one in Southern California involving a truck driver who abandoned his stuck vehicle on a track and another in which a suburban New York driver and give train passengers were killed when her car became inexplicably trapped between crossing gates.
The accidents have raised question about both the adequacy of rail crossing safety measures and regulations involving trains.
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