Dozens injured as train hits truck stuck at rail crossing in US
Oxnard, California
RAIL cars skidded onto their sides, a fireball lit up the dark and nearly 30 people were injured early on Tuesday when a commuter train slammed into a truck that had turned onto the railroad tracks and gotten stuck here about 96 kilometres north-west of Los Angeles.
The 5:45 AM crash interrupted train service for thousands of passengers and transformed a morning commute to Los Angeles into a scene of chaos at a hazardous rail crossing along strawberry fields and low-slung office parks and industrial supply businesses. The intersection was the scene of a fatal collision between an Amtrak passenger train and a car seven months ago.
In the accident on Tuesday, Metrolink passengers were launched from their seats as the train struck the truck and several cars derailed. Twenty-eight people were taken to hospitals, with broken bones and head, neck and back injuries, the authorities said.
Four people were critically injured, including the train's engineer, whom the authorities credited with quickly pulling the emergency brake and slowing the train after he spotted the truck sitting on the tracks.
When rescue crews arrived minutes later, they found three of the Metrolink cars on their sides and the truck engulfed in flames.
Officials said they did not know why the truck's driver, a 54-year-old man from Arizona, had steered onto the tracks. Jason Benites, Oxnard's assistant police chief, said an officer had found the driver about two km away, apparently disoriented and unsettled. He was taken to a hospital for observation and was said to be cooperating with the authorities.
The police later said the driver had been arrested on a felony hit-and-run charge.
The crash occurred at one of the potentially dangerous crossings in California, according to an accident prediction value generated by the Federal Railroad Administration. Of the 5,858 public crossings in the state, the crossing here at Rice Avenue and Fifth Street - an intersection often filled with produce trucks and agricultural equipment - has the eighth-highest accident prediction value. Only 52 public crossings in the nation are listed with a higher accident prediction value.
The metric takes into account certain physical characteristics of crossings and recent accidents, though it is not a perfect measurement of danger. It does not account for other factors, like topography and traffic congestion.
There have been 13 crashes involving trains and pedestrians or vehicles at this crossing since 1976, according to Federal Railroad Administration records. In June 2014, two people in an Infiniti G35 were killed at the crossing when they failed to stop at the lowered crossing arms and were struck by an Amtrak train. None of the train's passengers were hurt in that accident.
Patricia Villafana, whose son Joel Arias was driving the car in the fatal 2014 crash, said she is haunted now when she is stopped at the crossing and watches trains rushing past.
"It's very difficult," she said. "Every time I drive by there, the accident comes to my mind."
Despite the statistics, Oxnard residents said on Tuesday they believed the intersection was no more dangerous than any other surface crossings where drivers must cross train tracks. Jerry Gomez said a friend's car had recently been clipped by a train and the friend hurt while crossing the tracks at a different intersection. NYT
