NORTHFIELD, Vt. (AP) — An Amtrak train headed from Vermont to Washington, D.C., on Monday hit rocks that had fallen onto the track from a ledge, spilling the locomotive and a passenger car down an embankment, derailing three other cars and injuring seven people, authorities said.
The Vermonter train, carrying 98 passengers and four crew members, derailed at around 10:30 a.m. in Northfield, 20 miles southwest of Montpelier, they said.
“This was a freak of nature,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said.
One of the injured people was airlifted to a New Hampshire hospital and was being evaluated in its emergency room. The six others went to a local hospital with injuries including neck, back and shoulder pains and lightheadedness.
The Federal Railroad Administration said a crew member was seriously injured. Four hospitalized people were released by Monday evening, Amtrak said.
Passenger Bob Redmond, of Bay City, Michigan, was taking a foliage tour and sitting in the front row of the third car when the train derailed. He looked outside the window and saw the car that had been ahead of his was now alongside him.
“It was just going the other way, and we started tipping sideways and down we went,” he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating, board spokesman Eric Weiss said. It was sending a small team rather than the full-blown effort made for a fatal Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia in May.
The track where Monday’s crash occurred had been part of a $220 million upgrade of New England Central Railroad tracks funded with help from a $50 million federal recovery grant. In early 2013, after the upgrade had been completed, the speed limit in the area was increased from 55 mph to 59 mph.
Shumlin said there was no reason to believe there was any negligence on anyone’s part.
“We don’t have all the details, but this track was rebuilt, it was state-of-the-art track,” he said. “Ledge slides happen.”
Federal records show the company that operates that stretch of tracks, which is part of the Genesee and Wyoming Railroad, has had four accidents since 2006 that could have involved debris on the tracks. In the railroad’s 54 accidents since 2006, three people died.
Federal safety rules for tracks that carry passengers require at least two inspections every week, with at least one day between inspections.
State officials said a freight train had passed over the tracks Sunday night with no problems.
When asked if there was technology available that could have detected the slide before the train went through, officials said no.
“There is not really anything that’s going to detect this kind of thing,” said Dan Delabruere, the rail chief of the Vermont Agency of Transportation, who spoke at a news conference with Shumlin.
Numerous derailments around the world have been caused by debris on tracks, many linked to heavy rains that trigger slides or heavy winds that knock down trees. In 2010, a train in Beijing hit mounds of debris left on the track following a landslide, killing 19 people.
The region near Monday’s derailment received 2.5 inches of rain between Thursday and Friday, the National Weather Service said.
Rail company officials confirmed details of the crash but did not immediately provide a comment.
The Vermonter takes the route daily, beginning in northern Vermont. The 13-hour, 45-minute trip leaves St. Albans, Vermont, at 8:58 a.m. then passes through Springfield, Massachusetts, and New York, with D.C. as the destination.
Three cars that left the track Monday remained upright.
Tracy Zaplitny, also of Bay City, said she and other passengers broke a window to get out of the train.
“It’s a huge wreck up there,” she said.
At least several dozen passengers were loaded onto school buses to be taken to an armory at nearby Norwich University. Passengers helped each other after the crash.
The clearing of the track was to begin immediately, although officials did not know how long it would take before the section is reopened. Amtrak planned to bus passengers booked on the Vermonter to and from Springfield.
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Associated Press writer Joan Lowy contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
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This story has been corrected to show the train doesn’t go through Burlington.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I guess he meant freak accident, or perhaps an act of God, an actual legal term.
To be a freak of nature, or lusus naturae, a phenomenon has to be natural, not man-made. Perhaps the accident was a lusus technologiae, a freak of technology.
Conservatives have become so incompetent that now they are calling their lack of accountability for lax regulation and profits over safety a “freak of nature?” Well, they certainly are freaks but there isn’t anything natural about it.
All people make mistakes but some just can’t admit they are responsible for anything. Even the TeaParty trailer trash have come to understand the real difference between a responsible Democrat and a corrupt Republican official. There is a reason they hate the GOP Establishment so much these days.
Democrats don’t try to pass themselves off as gods or angels. The GOP family values/job creator frauds have ridden that dead horse way too far and way too long for anyone to buy into that conservative BS any longer. Republicans are responsible for the crap they sowed since Reagan and what it has reaped in failure after failure to perform.
Just wait until the New GOP Speaker is unable to keep the House in session nor the government open for any length of time because of its Far Right wing.
It’s going to be the final straw for the Silent Majority. How do Republicans believe there will not be repercussions at the polls? Citizens pay taxes and expect services in exchange for them. Republicans just want the titles and glory not the work that comes with being a public servant. It has never been more obvious.
2016 marks the year we finally send the majority of these Washington GOP slackers back to the public equity firms, Wall Street banks and foreign multinationals from which they came.
What was man-made about a rock slide?
What on earth are you talking about?
Shumlin is a Democrat, FWIW, but I don’t see how what you wrote has anything to do with the train derailment regardless.
The Governor of Vermont is a liberal Democrat. Even they can say dumb stuff sometimes.
Plus that section of track had just been modernized. While not a freak of “nature”, it was certainly not negligence. A freight train had just passed over it Sunday night with no problems.
This incident actually goes under the “stuff happens” category (unlike Jeb saying that about shootings).