Fatal Amtrak Philadelphia Derailment Rattles Train Riders
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A train ride ends in tragedy. Seven people are dead and hundreds injured when an Amtrak train bound for New York derails in Philadelphia. That train made a stop here in Baltimore along the way.
Christie Ileto has firsthand accounts from riders who escape the wreck alive.
Service north of Philadelphia has been suspended, leaving some commuters here in Baltimore scrambling.
The stories of survival mirror the horrifying images of a tangled mess of metal.
"I saw head injuries, bleeding, broken arms, broken legs—anything you could imagine," two passengers said.
Seven of the 243 passengers on Amtrak 188 are dead.
"It took a few minutes for everyone to realize the amount of pain they were in. That's when you really started to hear the screaming," one man said.
The train departed in D.C. heading north, making stops at New Carrollton, BWI, Penn Station, then Aberdeen and Wilmington.
Passengers report a normal ride until minutes after leaving Philadelphia's train station.
"Suddenly, this train starts tipping. And to me, it felt like it was taking off. It went into the air. It went around the curve. The speed around the curve sort of pushed the train off the track," said Jeffrey Cutler, passenger.
"Chaos erupts and things start flying--phones, laptops--and then people, seats, trays start flying. You hear bumping and you hear metal mangling," said Jeremy Wladis, passenger.
"Wave of panic initially. I was thrown into the girl next to me sitting in the window seat. The other side of the train started to fall on us. Finally, it stopped at a tilt and everyone was screaming," said passenger Janna D'Ambrisi.
Passengers describe the chaos as they tried to help one another in the darkness.
"I could see the blood on people's faces. They can't move. Their knees were out. I just tried to do my best to help people get out of that car because it was smoking," said Max Elfman, passenger.
"One man was sitting beside me with a woman who had an injured hip. And then trying to climb up. I helped a woman, somebody helped me up. I helped somebody out the window. Somebody pulled me. So we were all kind of exchanging, trying to get out of there," said another passenger.
Amtrak employees at Baltimore's Penn Station tell WJZ about ten people boarded. Brian Lyles was supposed to be on that train.
"Yes, but plans change. So I said I was going to leave today," Lyles said.
Lyles switched his ticket at the last minute from Penn Station. He lives in Baltimore, works in New York and now struggles to head north.
"I looked this morning and it was $1,000 to fly," he said.
The furthest north the trains are running is Philadelphia. Service both north and south of Penn Station is operating on a modified schedule. There's no telling how long this will last.
Many are left scrambling, as bus tickets quickly sell out.
"It was completely. Every seat was taken. They tried to get on every single person who they could," said one bus rider.
As the NTSB investigates what happened, commuters wait, bracing for more headaches.
Flights to New York from Baltimore are either sold out or simply too expensive.
