Lexington,SC : Amtrak train crash in South Carolina kills at least 2 and injures 116 on February, Sunday 4th 2018
Lexington, South Carolina
An Amtrak train traveling from New York to Miami crashed into a freight train early Sunday (Feb 4), killing at least two people, injuring at least 116 others and spilling thousands of gallons of fuel, according to officials.
Amtrak said its train, which was carrying eight crew members and 139 passengers, hit a CSX train near Cayce, South Carolina, outside Columbia, around 2.35am.
The Amtrak train’s engineer, Mr Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, Georgia, and its conductor, Mr Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Florida, died in the crash, Ms Margaret Fisher, the Lexington County Coroner, said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. Both men were in the first car of the train.
“We should have had a lot more casualties, but we didn’t,” she said.
The CSX train was stationary and appeared to be on the correct track, Gov. Henry McMaster said at a news conference Sunday. “It appears that Amtrak was on the wrong track,” he said. CSX operates the track, according to its online system map.
The first engine of the freight train was torn up, he said, and the engine of the Amtrak train, Train 91, was “barely recognisable.”
In a statement earlier Sunday, Amtrak said the lead engine and some of the passenger cars had derailed.
It was the second major crash involving an Amtrak train in less than a week. On Wednesday, a train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck in rural Virginia, killing a passenger in the truck.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that it was beginning an investigation.
While it was too early to speculate as to what might have happened, “it appears that one or the other of the trains failed to obey a signal,” Mr Steven Ditmeyer, an industry consultant and former federal railroad official, said in a phone interview Sunday.
The Lexington County spokesman, Mr Harrison Cahill, said a hazardous materials team had been called to the site because roughly 5,000 gallons of fuel had spilled.
Source :
Amtrak train crash in South Carolina kills at least 2 and injures 116