Philadelphia Emergency Responders Recall Frenzy of Amtrak Crash Night
By Mike Dunn
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Police and firefighters who were among the first on the scene of Tuesday night's deadly train accident gathered at City Hall this morning to recount those frightful hours.
"Controlled chaos would be an understatement," said police inspector Mike McCarrick, who runs the police department's East Division, where the crash occurred.
"Nothing prepares for what you see that night," noted McCarrick (seated second from right, below). "When I turned the corner and saw the heroic acts, the selfless acts that were being committed by police and firemen, putting themselves in immediate danger to assist the various victims, I've never been prouder of the police department and the fire department."
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"We got a couple of frantic calls from people on the train," recalled Ken Carey, who is with Fire Dispatch. "They had no clue where they were. The people were frantic, but they were also calm. They were able to say, 'I've been in an accident, and I don't know where I am.' "
"We did receive multiple calls at the same time," agreed Khiria Greene, one of the dispatchers fielding calls. "We did the best that we could, and we realized it was a derailment, a mass casualty incident. My first instinct was to contact the local hospitals so that they knew they were going to have a lot of people coming in very soon from this train derailment."
Ladder 15, headed by Lt. Joe Farrell, was one of the first fire department units on the scene.
"The scale was almost overwhelming," he said today. "There was zero lighting, and the concern about active railways and live, energized lines was one of our primary concerns."
That concern was shared by Craig Murphy, the fire department's chief of special operations (center background in top photo).
"The train lines were dangling where we were going to have to some of our work -- the electrically charged lines," he recalled observing at the crash scene.
And Murphy says the so-called "cadaver dogs" brought in to find bodies made their task easier.
"Our K-9 dogs, they were the stars of the show. They did the work that obviously our noses couldn't do," Murphy said.
The cooperation among the first responders, Lt. Farrell added, was outstanding:
"I tell you what: it's one of the proudest moments of my life, being in the Philadelphia Fire Department and a City of Philadelphia employee."
The first responders stressed that their training, including regular emergency drills, paid off in a big way on Tuesday night.