An Amtrak train derailed on Monday in Washington state during its inaugural run on a faster route from Seattle to Portland, Oregon, sending passenger cars tumbling from a bridge onto a major highway, killing at least three riders and injuring about 100 people.
Thirteen of the train's 14 cars jumped the tracks, Washington State Patrol spokeswoman Brooke Bova said. Five vehicles and two trucks were involved in the accident, and the highway was littered with fragments of the bridge and tree branches. Some motorists were injured but none died, authorities said.
Local officials confirmed three fatalities and more than 100 transported hospitals. The Seattle Times newspaper and Seattle TV station KOMO reported six deaths, citing emergency authorities.
Several hours after the 7:40 a.m. crash in DuPont, Washington, train cars remained dangling from the overpass, with others strewn across Interstate 5. Washington State Patrol spokeswoman Brooke Bova said it was still possible that passengers remained inside some of the cars perched on the overpass but speculated anyone still aboard was probably dead.
The train carried 77 passengers and seven crew, officials said. Previously they had said there were five crew members.
“It was just a scene of chaos and piles of twisted metal," said Ted Danek, administrator for the city of Dupont who visited the site shortly after the derailment.
Derailment occurred on the inaugural run
The derailment occurred on the first day Amtrak trains began using the new inland route between the Washington cities of Tacoma and Olympia, part of a $181 million project to cut travel time, according to an October news release from the state's transportation department and Amtrak.
The rerouting takes trains along I-5, enabling them to reach speeds of 127 km per hour.
Monday's southbound Seattle-to-Portland train, whose scheduled departure time was 6 a.m., was the first to take the new route, which uses tracks owned by a commuter line.
Cars from an Amtrak train that derailed lie spilled onto Interstate 5, on Monday in DuPont, Washington.
It was not immediately clear whether the derailment was connected to the new route. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member told reporters it was too early to say what may have caused the crash, and that the NTSB was sending investigators to the scene.
A statement on Monday from the state transportation department said the track had undergone “weeks of inspection and testing” before Monday.
Amtrak's co-chief executive, Richard Anderson, declined to speculate on the cause while speaking to reporters on Monday. He confirmed that positive train control (PTC), a system that automatically slows trains if they are going too fast, was not installed on the tracks.
By law, PTC must be installed on all passenger rail systems by 2018, a deadline that has repeatedly been delayed after rail agencies said implementation was more complicated than anticipated. Sound Transit commuter line, which owns the track, reported in September that it did not yet have PTC in operation.
Infrastructure improvements needed: Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump said the crash illustrated the need for infrastructure improvements.
The rerouting project was budgeted at $180.7 million and funded by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), according to the state transportation department. The work was done by Sound Transit and reviewed by the FRA, the department said on Monday.
I-5 is the West Coast's major north-south highway, running between the U.S-Mexican border in San Diego, California, and the border with Canada in Washington.
The mayor of a town along the new route warned early this month that high-speed trains were dangerously close to cars and pedestrians, according to Seattle's KOMO News.
The derailment was Amtrak's second in Washington state this year. On July 2, a southbound train with more than 250 people aboard derailed in the town of Steilacoom, just a few miles north of Monday's derailment. No serious injuries were reported.
In May 2015, an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia, killing eight people and injuring more than 200. The NTSB concluded the driver became distracted by radio transmissions and lost track of where he was.
An Amtrak train traveling from New York in April 2016 hit a backhoe working on railroad tracks in Chester, Pennsylvania, killing two maintenance workers and injuring 41.
