U.S.

Amtrak Train That Derailed Was Going 106 M.P.H., Officials Say; 7 Killed

By JON HURDLE, JAD MOUAWAD and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑAMAY 13, 2015

PHILADELPHIA — The Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least seven, was barreling into a sharp turn at 106 miles an hour — more than twice the speed limit on that stretch — when the engineer slammed on the emergency brakes, seconds before the train jumped the tracks, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The maximum allowed speed was 50 m.p.h. on that curve, in the Port Richmond section of the city, but data downloaded from the “black box” recorder showed that just before it crashed, the train was speeding at 106 m.p.h., Robert Sumwalt, the National Transportation Safety Board member leading the investigation, said at a news conference late Wednesday. He said that the speed limit on the straightaway leading to the curve was 80 m.p.h; the Federal Railroad Administration said it was 70.

“Just moments before the derailment,” Mr. Sumwalt said, “the engineer applied full emergency brake application.” When the data recorder stopped working three seconds later, he said, the speed was 102 m.p.h.

What We Know

Officials said the data recorder, found early Wednesday, was taken first to Amtrak’s operations center in Delaware, and then to the safety board’s laboratory in Washington. Mr. Sumwalt said that in addition to information from the recorder — like a log of the train’s speed, throttle and brake settings and alarms in the engineer’s cab — investigators were studying video from a forward-facing camera mounted on the locomotive.

Passengers who emerged battered and bloodied described a chaotic, terrifying scene, with people thrown against walls, furniture and each other, and luggage and other loose items flying through the air and hitting people. More than 200 people were injured.

The wreck occurred as the New York-bound train passed through a rail yard called Frankford Junction northeast of Center City, where multiple freight and passenger routes converge and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor makes one of its sharpest turns.

Experts said the derailment might have been averted by a safety system called positive train control, that can, among other features, automatically reduce the speed of a train that is going too fast. To do that, the system must be installed on both the train and the route. The Amtrak train had it, but that stretch of track did not.

“We feel that had such a system been installed in this section of track, this accident would not have occurred,” Mr. Sumwalt said.

Railroads are under a congressional mandate to install the system on passenger routes and major freight lines by the end of the year, but they are seeking an extension because of the cost and complexity of the work. The Association of American Railroads said that operators have already spent $5 billion on positive train control, and still need to spend about the same amount to comply with the mandate.

Absence of positive train control was also cited as a factor in the fatal 2013 crash of a Metro-North train in the Bronx.

Even without the system, rail safety experts said Amtrak locomotives have multiple systems to alert train operators to excess speed, with warning lights and sound alarms. Mr. Sumwalt said he did not know yet whether those systems had worked.

Russ Quimby, a retired rail crash investigator with the safety board, said: “When you are depending entirely on a human being, the engineer in this case, then there is an opening for a human error and a tragedy like this one. If you have no system to regulate the speed, then that’s the core failure.”

Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia, at a separate news conference, refuted reports that the engineer who was driving the train had refused to speak to investigators. “The engineer was injured, received medical care and was interviewed by the Philadelphia Police Department,” he said.

But Mr. Sumwalt said the safety board had not yet spoken to the engineer, who was not identified.

The mayor reported the toll of seven dead and more than 200 injured, adding that for now, the focus of emergency crews combing through the twisted wreck was “making sure that we are searching every car, every inch, thousands of square feet, to find individuals that may have been on the train.”

“We are heartbroken at what has happened here,” he said. “We have not experienced anything like it in modern times.”

The names of the victims began to trickle out Wednesday afternoon. The United States Naval Academy confirmed that one of its midshipmen was among the dead, and family members identified him as Justin Zemser of Rockaway Beach, N.Y., in Queens, a former student body president at Channel View High School.

“We’re not ready to talk yet. We are just grieving. And when we are ready, we will be in touch,” said a relative, who did not want to be identified.

The Associated Press said that one of its employees, Jim Gaines, 48, a video software architect who lived in Plainsboro, N.J., was also killed.

Another victim was Rachel Jacobs, chief executive of ApprenNet, an education technology company in Philadelphia, whose co-workers spent most of the day Wednesday unsure of what had happened to her. A friend, Michelle Kedem, said she had received a text message from Ms. Jacobs’s family confirming her death.

Mr. Nutter said that some passengers have not yet been found, but officials were still not sure how many. “We have not completely matched the manifest that we received from Amtrak with the patient or hospital records,” he said.

People trying to find loved ones congregated first at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, then at a temporary aid station the city set up at an elementary school, and finally at the Marriott Hotel downtown, where Amtrak opened a family center.

The train, Northeast Regional Train 188, from Washington to New York,was pulled by an ACS-64 electric locomotive built by Siemens, a model first put into service last year that is capable of speeds up to 125 m.p.h.

It jumped the tracks at 9:21 p.m. Tuesday, tossing around the passengers and crew members as five of the train’s seven passenger cars tumbled completely off the tracks and onto their sides, crumpled. One car was particularly badly mangled, looking like nothing so much as a crushed and torn soda can. One car struck a steel utility pole, and a stretch of bent and twisted track could be seen near the wreckage, indicating the sheer force of the crash.

Passengers described a quiet ride turned suddenly chaotic and terrifying.

“The guy next to me was unconscious, so I just kind of picked him up and slapped him in the face and said, ‘Hey buddy, get up, get up,’ and he came to,” said Patrick J. Murphy, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, who was on the train.

The engine pulling the train separated from the passenger cars, left the tracks, rumbled through a dirt area and came to rest diagonally across other sets of tracks.

After the crash, emergency workers carrying flashlights and ladders moved frantically from car to car helping passengers off the train, some bloodied, others dazed. Parts of the damaged cars were so badly mangled that firefighters had to use hydraulic tools to rescue people trapped inside.

Amtrak reported that 238 passengers and five crew members were supposed to be on the train, but officials cautioned that those figures were inexact; off-duty Amtrak employees could have been aboard without appearing on passenger manifests, and people who bought tickets might have missed the train.

The wreck severed Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, one of the nation’s busiest rail routes, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s commuter train line from Philadelphia to Trenton, stranding thousands of passengers and threatening to snarl travel for days or weeks to come.

Temple University Hospital received 54 patients from the wreck, including one who died overnight from a massive chest injury, said Dr. Herbert E. Cushing, the chief medical officer. They included people from Spain, Belgium, Germany, Albania and India.

“I think we’re fortunate that there weren’t more deaths,” he said.

Dr. Cushing said that most of the patients suffered rib fractures from being thrown around the train. Several also had other broken bones, he said, and some had punctured lungs, but relatively few had head injuries. Most of the patients were treated at the hospital and released, but eight remained in critical condition.

About 20 minutes before the crash, on the same line but a few miles away, “an unknown projectile” struck a Septa commuter train and damaged a window, an authority spokeswoman said. Mr. Nutter said that had “nothing to do with this incident.”

Amtrak service continued between Philadelphia and Washington on a modified schedule, but no trains were able to run between Philadelphia and New York.

The derailment took place in roughly the same area of track that was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest rail accidents. On Labor Day in 1943, a 16-car Pennsylvania Railroad Congressional Limited train carrying military service members on leave derailed near the same curve, killing 79 people and injuring 117.

Officials concluded that a hot journal box had burned off and caused an axle to snap, which sent the train catapulting off the track.

Correction: May 13, 2015

An earlier version of this article misstated, at one point, the day on which the train derailment occurred. It was on Tuesday, not Wednesday.