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-- Via Rail Derailment: 3 dead, 46 injured in Burlington train crash
Via Rail Derailment: 3 dead, 46 injured in Burlington train crash
Terrible week for trains after that train collision in Argentina that killed 49 and injured 600.
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Originally posted @ http://www.thestar.com/news/article...rain-crash?bn=1 Via Rail Derailment: 3 dead, 46 injured in Burlington train crash Three people are dead and 46 are injured after a six-car Via Rail train travelling from Niagara to Union Station derailed in an industrial area of Burlington around 3:28 p.m. Sunday. Via Rail has confirmed that the three killed were employees. All three were locomotive engineers. A fourth crew member suffered minor injuries. Via Rail derailment: Follow our live coverage Three of the passengers who were hurt have been airlifted to hospital with severe injuries. One has a broken leg, another suffered a heart attack and the third has a back injury. The other 42 passengers suffered minor injuries and were either treated on scene or in local hospitals, Via Rail officials told reporters Sunday evening. Via spokeswoman Michelle Lamarche says 75 passengers were on board the train travelling from Niagara Falls, Ont., to Toronto. There were also four crew members onboard. Photos: Via train derailment Emergency crews worked to pull an estimated 60 passengers who were trapped in the wreckage and three air ambulances were on scene. A Via spokesperson said she now believes all passengers are now off the train. Aerial pictures from the scene show a train zigzagged off the tracks, with at least four cars flipped onto their sides. One car has slid onto its side and into a nearby building after it left the tracks. Reports from inside the train scene describe a frantic scene with passengers falling over each other. Faisal Abid, 21, was seated in the first car when the train derailed and flipped. �My legs were basically on the windows,� he said. He said many people were screaming they were hurt, with a little girl about 10 years old behind him who was travelling with her parents asking them if she was going to be an orphan. �There was blood everywhere,� said Abid. He said the man behind him went through the window and screaming that he couldn�t breathe. �It was like a plane crash,� said Deanna Villella, 40, who boarded at St. Catharines. �The cars were completely twisted and on their sides. It was awful.� Glenn Harris, a neighbour who lives about 200 metres from the crash scene, said he heard �a very loud bang,� that �rattled off the windows.� Halton police said cars exited the tracks near Plains Rd. and King Rd. Ambulances remain at the scene of the accident, as well as three of air ambulances. Crews are in the process of moving damaged equipment off the tracks so that it can be inspected. A Via spokesperson said they do not know what caused Via train 92 to derail. �I have no clue,� said Lamarche. �Right now the focus is on the crew and passengers.� Cheryl Knapp from Ottawa said her brother-in-law and nephew were on the first car coming back from a day trip to Niagara Falls when the train derailed, trapping them on board. �My brother-in-law thinks he has a broken nose,� said Knapp. �He says there are a lot of injured people behind him.� Knapp said her brother-in-law and his son have been taken to hospital. Hamilton General Hospital declared a code orange � meaning it was facing a disaster situation. That has since been lifted. But at least one air ambulance was sent to Hamilton General with injured patients and the hospital is clearing emergency rooms and operating rooms to prepare for more. Toronto EMS officials sent an emergency bus to the scene and transported 10 patients with minor injuries to Mississauga General Hospital. GO Transit says its trains are turning back at Burlington. Officials are asking passengers who were on the train to contact Halton police so they can be accounted for. The number is 905-825-4747 ext. 2306. The Transportation Safety Board, Halton police and Via Rail are investigating. The crash has caused minor damage to nearby buildings. |
pretty crazy! apparently a freight train derailed at the same spot exactly 8 years ago too...
RIP to those 3 locomotive workers
RIP to the dead. I think out of all transportation accidents (plane, bus, car, train, boat), I would have to say a train would be the worst. The chaos and devastation on a derailment just makes me cringe
Re: Via Rail Derailment: 3 dead, 46 injured in Burlington train crash
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| Originally posted by kotsy Terrible week for trains |
Train derailments scramble my brain a bit - the sheer force behind all of the cars in motion and the twist of metal when something goes wrong are really terrifying.
I was just on a VIA rail train last weekend from Montreal. Scary.
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| Originally posted @ http://www.thestar.com/news/transpo...gators-say?bn=1 Via train derailment: Train 92 was travelling four times the appropriate speed, say investigators he Via Rail train that jumped tracks near Burlington on Sunday was travelling four times the appropriate speed when it fatally derailed, investigators said Thursday. Train 92 was travelling 107 km/h (67 mph) when it tried to cross from track two to track three, said the Transportation Safety Board�s Tom Griffith. The allowable speed at that switchover is 24 km/h (15 mph). Three VIA engineers died in the crash and dozens were injured, some seriously. The train�s black box, which investigators used to determine the train�s speed, also revealed that the brakes were functioning, but were not applied. Griffith, investigator-in-charge, cautioned that human error has not been determined as the cause of the accident. Investigators still don�t know whether the signal system, which would have indicated the appropriate speed to the conductors, was functioning properly. �A lot of work remains to be done. We will take the time necessary,� Griffith said. He also said the speed of the train was �enhanced� when it left the station, and that it never slowed down afterwards. Train 92 departed Niagara Falls at 2 p.m. on Sunday, bound for Union Station, and derailed 90 minutes later near Aldershot GO station. Maximum speed for trains is 160 km/h (100 mph), Griffith said. Griffith said because the trains do not carry voice recordings, investigators don�t know who was at the controls when the train derailed. The lack of voice recording inside the train made the investigation �challenging.� Three VIA engineers � Ken Simmonds, Peter Snarr and Patrick Robinson � were killed. Forty-six other passengers were injured and as of Wednesday five remained in hospital. |
That bullshit doesn't even surprise me.
Last summer going to Montreal, and the train was FLYING through sections trying to make up lost time. Things actually fell off my tray table; I have never been on such a rough ride. On the way back, smooth as silk.
This is going to result in a massive civil lawsuit. What's going to be interesting is if they can prove that the central coordinating office told them to go faster or not. Because otherwise the company will argue that the engineers were operating outside of the required guidelines.
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| Originally posted by Orko This is going to result in a massive civil lawsuit. What's going to be interesting is if they can prove that the central coordinating office told them to go faster or not. Because otherwise the company will argue that the engineers were operating outside of the required guidelines. |
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| Originally posted by mdm8 Are they not responsible for the actions of their staff regardless? |
Damnnn! Bad things happen in threes!
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| Originally posted @ http://www.thestar.com/news/world/a...-in-poland?bn=1 16 dead, 58 injured as two passenger trains collide head-on in Poland  SZCZECHOCINY, POLAND�Two trains running on the same track collided head-on in southern Poland in a shower of sparks, killing 16 people and injuring 58 in the country�s worst train disaster in more than 20 years. The crash near Krakow turned cars at the front of each train into heaps of mangled metal and toppled others on their sides. Neighbours in the town of Szczechociny alerted by what they said sounded like a bomb rushed to the scene to smash open windows, and survivors emerged in a state of shock, many crying out for help and carrying baggage. Rescuers worked through the night to recover bodies and help the wounded. One of the trains was on the wrong track. Maintenance work was being done on the tracks before the accident, but officials said it�s too early to determine the cause of the disaster. A woman living in a house about 200 meters (yards) from the site of the accident said she was standing at her window when the two trains collided, creating a �terrible, terrible noise � like a bomb going off.� �So I ran out of the house, and on one side I saw train lights and one the other side I saw train lights, and in the middle sparks,� Anna Sap said. �People from the train starting crying, �Help, help!� So we and the neighbours ran to them. Some of them smashed windows to let them out.� Her husband Grzegorz Sap added that people began emerging from the train �with hand luggage and in shock. They had no idea where they were.� An unnamed passenger interviewed on the all-news station TVN24 said he felt the force of the collision. �I hit the person in front of me. The lights went out. Everything flew,� he said. �We flew over the compartment like bags. We could hear screams. We prayed.� The U.S. consulate in Krakow said an American woman was among the dead and her family had been informed. Spokesman Benjamin Ousley said he could give no more information and that Polish authorities would release further details at a later point. Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier had said that several of the passengers were foreigners, including people from Ukraine, Spain and France, but none of them were among the dead or mostly seriously injured. President Bronislaw Komorowski visited the site Sunday, saying that when rescue efforts are over he would make an announcement about a period of national mourning. �This is our most tragic train disaster in many, many years,� Tusk said. Rescuers brought in heavy equipment to free a body from the wreckage, and ended up finding two, a man and a woman, said Krzysztof Dobrzyniewicz, the mayor of Szczekociny. Rafal Krupa, a council member in the nearby town of Zawiercie, said emergency workers got to the site as quickly as possible but that in the first moments it was difficult for them to determine where the crash had occurred. Passengers on the train �began calling in to the emergency services but they weren�t really aware of where they were,� he said. A doctor in one of the hospitals, Szymon Nowak, said many of the injured were in a serious condition, with some in artificially induced comas. �It�s a very, very sad day and night in the history of Polish railways and for all of us,� Tusk said. The trains could hold up to 350 people but it�s not clear how many were actually on board. The accident comes three months before millions of soccer fans will start crisscrossing the country � many by train � to watch matches at the Euro 2012 championships, which is being co-hosted by Ukraine. Poland, which is still recovering economically from decades of communist rule, doesn�t yet have the high-speed trains of Western Europe � many of the local trains are old and slow. However, the country does offer fairly speedy service between some key cities, and trains are generally seen as safe and used by many in the country of 38 million. Prosecutors have opened an investigation into how the train was on the wrong track, but officials said it was too soon to draw any conclusions. One train was traveling from the eastern city of Przemysl to Warsaw in the north, while the other � on the wrong track � was heading south from Warsaw to Krakow. Komorowski visited the crash site Sunday, as well as hospitals where the injured were being treated. �The scale of this phenomenon is so large that there should be nationwide mourning,� he said. In Germany, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle expressed his nation�s condolences to the victims� families and wished the injured a swift recovery. �It is with horror that I learned about the grave train accident in Poland that killed numerous people and injured many others,� Westerwelle said. �Our deepest compassion and our condolences go to our Polish friends.� The tragedy was Poland�s worst involving trains since 1990, when 16 people were killed in a collision involving two trains in the Warsaw suburb of Ursus. Since then, the most serious Polish rail accident was in 1997, when 12 people were killed in Reptowo. The country�s most deadly train disaster post-World War II dates back to 1980, when 65 people were killed when a freight train collided with a passenger train near Otloczyn. |
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