Federal accident investigators arrived in New York Wednesday to begin piecing together Tuesday night’s fiery Metro-North Railroad crash that killed six people and injured more than a dozen in what officials say is the commuter rail's deadliest accident in history.
Five passengers on the train and the driver of a Mercedes Benz SUV were killed when the train slammed into the SUV, which was trapped between crossing gates in Valhalla, at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, 45 minutes after it left Grand Central with hundreds of commuters aboard.
After the collision, the train burst into flames and pushed the SUV nearly 10 car lengths down the tracks before coming to a halt. The force of the impact also caused the electrified third rail to come up and pierce part of the train.
"This is truly an ugly, brutal sight," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a briefing shortly after the accident Tuesday night. "The third rail of the track came up from the explosion and went right through the car, so it is truly a devastatingly ugly situation to see."
The SUV driver killed was identified Wednesday as Ellen Brody by the owner of the Chappaqua jewelry store where she worked, ICD Contemporary Jewelry. Among the five men killed aboard the train were financial executive Eric Vandercar of Bedford Hills and museum curator Walter Liedtke.
Officials initially said six passengers aboard the train and the driver were killed, but the death toll was lowered Wednesday morning to include five male passengers and the SUV driver, believed to be a married mother, a law enforcement source told NBC 4 New York.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino called the death toll reduction a “minor miracle."
Fifteen train riders were hurt in the crash, some of them seriously. Twelve of those passengers were treated at Westchester Medical Center for injuries including, cuts, bruises, dislocations, open fractures, smoke inhalations and burns. One patient remains in critical condition.
The train engineer was also treated for his injuries at a hospital, but was not believed to be one of the casualties, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast said.
Astorino said that all but one of the victims who were killed were burned beyond recognition and will have to be identified by dental records, a process that could take up to a day.
“To think about what some of these commuters went through, they got on the 5:45 p.m. train, probably talked to somebody at home to say, ‘I’m on the way,’ and the world became upside down,” Astorino said. “That train had so many flames in it, so engulfed, the inside of that first car is just melted and charred with the third rail going right through it.”
A National Transportation Safety Board team was dispatched to the Valhalla scene Wednesday morning. At a briefing in Washington, D.C., before his team left for New York, NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said teams would likely be at the scene for about a week gathering facts and insight, and will look into a myriad of factors that may have contributed to the crash.
"We've got several busy days ahead of us," Sumwalt said. "Our goal is to not only find out what happened, but to find out why it happened."
Investigators will look at data from recorders from the train, the signal system and the crossing gates. They'll also investigate medical records, highway conditions and will have fire officials on scene because of the blaze sparked by the crash, Sumwalt said.
"We've officially taken command of the accident scene," Sumwalt said.
Cuomo and Prendergast said that an event recorder on the train will lend investigators valuable insight. Sumwalt said recorders at the crossing and in the signaling systems will also be inspected. Investigators Wednesday began documenting what they called "perishable" evidence from the scene, requested aerial photos of the crash site and asked witnesses to contact out to the agency.
It may be a year before the NTSB issues its final report on the crash, Sumwalt said, but he added the agency may recommend some essential safety measures sooner based on preliminary findings.
The MTA and the Federal Railroad Administration are also conducting their own investigations.
Federal railroad administration guidelines -- which MTA complies with -- mandate a minimum 20-second warning for motorists at a railroad crossing. The design for warning times can range in seconds from 20 to the high 30s, with the timing depending on the speed of the train in that location, officials say.
Crews were Wednesday to remove the train from the tracks so work can begin to repair the section of electrified rail that was damaged, Astorino said. The wreckage will be moved to an indoor hangar while NTSB teams investigate.
Six hundred and fifty people were on board train No. 659, which departed Grand Central at 5:45 p.m. The train made one stop at 125th Street in Harlem before it proceeded express toward Chappaqua, the MTA said. Since the train wasn't stopping in Valhalla, the engineer had no reason to slow down or stop before seeing the SUV on the tracks, a law enforcement source told NBC 4 New York.
Passengers' accounts of the crash varied according to where they were sitting. Those in back reported feeling only small "jolts" or "jerks" upon impact, while those sitting toward the front heard a loud explosion and saw smoke quickly filling their cars.
The collision comes a little more than a year after new Metro-North President Joseph Giuletti took over, with a vow to make safety the top priority.
Multiple derailments in 2013 and 2014 -- including one in December 2013 that killed four people when a fatigued engineer fell asleep at the controls -- had prompted a federal review in which investigators concluded that Metro-North sacrificed safety in 2013 to accommodate an obsession with on-time performance.
The MTA says it has made dozens of recommended changes, but big-ticket items like automated train control could still be months or even years away. It appears too early to tell whether safety controls could have prevented Tuesday's collision.
Metro-North has established a family assistance center at the Mount Pleasant Town Hall at 1 Town Hall Plaza in Valhalla and a phone hotline at 1-800-METRO-INFO (800-638-7646).
Photo Credit: AP
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