At least six people were killed when a crowded Metro-North commuter train hit a vehicle on the tracks north of White Plains, New York, Tuesday, sparking a fire that gutted the lead car of the train and burned bodies beyond recognition, officials said.
“There are six people who left home and said ‘goodbye honey’ and never came back,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. He called the accident a “truly ugly and brutal sight.”
Among the dead were at least five passengers on the rush-hour train and the driver of a black Jeep Cherokee that was struck and pushed about 400 feet, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said. Cuomo added that the electrified third rail of the track buckled and pierced the front train car.
“You had a metal rail going right down the train like a ramrod,” Cuomo said. “That’s what caused massive destruction.”
Officials earlier said seven people died in the accident, but revised the figure to six.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino said today that all but one of those killed were charred beyond recognition. Families were gathering around 10 a.m. at the medical examiner’s office to make positive identifications, but Astorino believed medical and dental records would be needed.
“That train had so many flames in it, it was so engulfed, the inside of that first car is just melted and charred," Astorino said.
Citing an eyewitness quoted by local media, Astorino said the preliminary, unconfirmed indication was that the railroad crossing gate came down on the vehicle involved in the accident, the female driver got out to put the gate up, and then she drove forward instead of in reverse and into the path of the oncoming train. He noted that traffic may have been backed up in the area because of another accident on the Taconic State Parkway.
Cuomo told ABC News in a radio interview that “it would be apparently inexplicable” if the SUV driver pulled forward onto the track and into the path of the oncoming train.
“If there’s a lesson to learn we’ll learn it,” Cuomo said. “But sometimes accidents happen and human beings can act randomly.”
The National Transportation Safety Board launched a go-team to investigate the accident, which is the deadliest tragedy in the history of the railroad.
NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said this morning that officials have secured recorders for train and highway signals, and sent experts to analyze them, and also to investigate areas such as highway factors and fire propagation. The NTSB expects to gather evidence on the scene for five to seven days for an investigation that could last a year.
“Our goal is not only to find what happened, but to find out why it happened,” Sumwalt said. "We go there and we cast a wide net. ... At this point, everything is on the table. Nothing is off the table.”
Justin Kaback
PHOTO: A Metro North train struck a car, sparking a fire, north of White Plains, N.Y., Feb. 3, 2015.
Angelo Ortiz, one of the first paramedics on the scene, had trouble putting the accident into context hours afterwards.
"What I first saw was the glow of the fire down the road. And as I approached I was in disbelief when I saw the fire was coming from the car that was completely engulfed. When I knew it was the train that was on fire as well, that's when I realized that this is probably the worst tragedy I've ever responded to," Ortiz said.
"It was incredibly, just very tragic. That's all I can say. I'm still in disbelief,"
Rick Hope, a driver who said he saw the train hit the SUV, said he saw the events preceding the accident that Astorino and other officials described.
“She looked very calm and she was taking what I thought was an awful long time because I'm thinking, ‘The clock is ticking here.’ The lights are flashing. The gate's down. You don't have much time,” Hope told ABC News.
Albert Conte/The Journal News/AP Photo
PHOTO: Passengers are assisted off a Metro-North Railroad passenger train in Valhalla, N.Y., Feb. 3, 2015.
Passengers were evacuated to the back of the Harlem Line train and then were taken for shelter to a local rock-climbing gym, the Cliffs. Buses were dispatched to move the hundreds of passengers to Pleasantville, New York, a railroad representative said.
At least 12 passengers were injured and taken to area hospitals. The train had left New York's Grand Central Station at 5:44 p.m. and the collision occurred at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Aerial video of the scene showed the head car of the train in flames and at least one vehicle crushed beneath it. The vehicle was struck at the Commerce St. grade crossing in Valhalla.
Following the accident, Harlem Line Service was temporarily suspended between North White Plains and Pleasantville, and Astorino said today that the train would have to remain on the tracks well into the Wednesday as officials investigated the accident. He added that the MTA would try to fill the gap in service with buses.
About 700 passengers were estimated to be on board the train when it crashed, including Justin Kaback, commuting home to Danbury, Connecticut.
"I was trapped. You know there was people in front of me and behind me and I was trapped in the middle of a car and it was getting very hot," he told ABC News. "All the air was turned off so there was no circulation so it was definitely scary especially when people are walking by on the outside and they said, the train's on fire, there's a fire."
@anabolicapple/Twitter
PHOTO: Passengers being evacuated from a Metro North train after it struck a car, sparking a fire, north of White Plains, N.Y., Feb. 3, 2015.
The NTSB in November issued a special investigation report on five Metro-North Railroad accidents between May 2013 and March 2014 that killed a total of six people and injured 126. They found "safety management problems" in all the accidents.
"Metro-North and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have much work yet to do," NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart said in a statement at the time. "The FRA has much work to do as well. Railroad safety across the country depends on the FRA turning decisively to the task."
Metro-North safety programs that were in place were not effectively used to manage the safety of its operations and employees, the NTSB said. And Metro-North did not effectively investigate accidents and incidents to identify and fix safety deficiencies while known deficiencies were not corrected, the NTSB said.
A December 2013 derailment in the Bronx killed four people on the railroad, which is the second-busiest commuter line in the country behind the Long Island Railroad.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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