James Keivom/New York Daily News Six died in fiery crash after Metro-North train collided with SUV in Valhalla. Bruce Meyer left his law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges in the General Motors Building on Tuesday and hurried to catch the 5:44 p.m. Metro-North express from Grand Central Terminal to Chappaqua.
“I usually catch the 7 p.m. train,” Meyer says. “But my daughter had a school performance, so I left early.”
Meyer grabbed a seat near the middle of the train that sped north.
About the same time, Ravi Gudhka, 33, and Dave Ruohst, 42, owners of iPower Generators, a home generator service company, and their mechanic, Dave Cwik, 26, were leaving their office in Westchester County. Their office at 115 Wall St. in Valhalla overlooks the Metro-North tracks upon which the train carrying Meyer and hundreds of other commuters jolted north.
“We left early yesterday and so we missed the collision,” Gudhka said Wednesday morning, gazing out his bay window at that scorched silver train that sat like a crippled steel centipede on the snow-covered tracks.
The snout of the fire-blacked train was still snarled around a singed Mercedes SUV that had been trapped on the tracks at Commerce Ave. and crumpled like a ball of aluminum foil by the mega-ton train that smashed into it at a clip of more than 60 mph.
Behind the point of impact snow-sprinkled pines climbed toward a steel-colored sky as police and investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board combed the site of the grisly crash that left six dead and 15 injured.
“No way that woman driving the (SUV) didn’t hear those three whistles the train always blows,” says Ruohst. “It was dark by then so she must’ve seen the blinding train headlight.”
“I hear that whistle blowing and the bells ringing all day long,” says Gudhka. “Twice an hour going north and south off peak. Four times an hour during peak. It’s so loud you think it’s blowing in here and I have to put phone calls on hold. That poor woman driver had to hear that train.”
Cwik has crossed the tracks at Commerce Ave. hundreds of times.
“I must cross that crossing six times a day in my truck on calls,” Cwik says. “I know they say the safety arm came down on the (SUV). But last year I was at the railroad crossing on Lakewood and a semi got stuck and here came the train. That semi driver didn’t hesitate. He barreled right through the arm. They snap like twigs.”
One witness says the driver, Ellen Brody, got out of her car to inspect the damage caused by the safety arm. A source told the Daily News that Brody was initially in the clear. She wasn’t on the tracks. As the train thundered and whistled her way, she lurched forward instead of speeding in reverse, leaving her squarely in death’s path.
GREGG VIGLIOTTI/The New York Daily News MTA workers began moving the crippled train toward White Plains late Wednesday. “It was weird because I felt a kind of bump, not like a major crash,” says Meyer, who was on the train. “Passengers were baffled. Then a conductor came into the car and said we’d hit a car. Then we evacuated. But I had no idea there was a fire or that anyone was hurt.”
When he got off the train, Meyer was surprised to see so many police officers, firefighters and ambulance workers.
“The front of the train was in flames,” Meyer says. “A lot of confusion. There were no buses or any other means of transportation. It was very cold and we had to walk about 3 miles to the Hawthorne station from the middle of nowhere.”
The middle of nowhere was Commerce Park, an industrial strip in working-class Valhalla where Wednesday morning, Gudhka, Ruohst and Cwik gazed at the aftermath of the worst train wreck in Metro-North history.
“I just feel so bad for all those people who died,” says Cwik.
“Just people going home to their families after work,” says Ruohst.
Meyer says his wife Jackie picked him up in Hawthorne.
“I didn’t realize how bad the train wreck I’d just been in was until I got home and saw it on TV,” he says.
“I sat there realizing how lucky I was and I hugged my wife and kids,” he added. “Thank God I sat in a middle car. I will never again sit in a front car of any train.”
Gudhka said, “I will never hear that train whistle again without thinking of these poor people who died right outside my window.”
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1Dg9yuQ
0 comments:
Post a Comment