5 killed when Amtrak train derails in Philadelphia; dozens injured

At least five people were killed and dozens injured Tuesday night when an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia, with several cars tipping onto their sides, officials said.

Fifty-three people were taken to hospitals, six of them in critical condition, a Philadelphia Fire Department spokesman told reporters.

The scene “is an absolute disastrous mess,” Mayor Michael Nutter said at a news conference. “It is a devastating scene down there.... The engine completely separated from the train” and one car was perpendicular to the rest, he said.

About 238 passengers and five crew members were on board Northeast Regional train 188, which had been heading from Washington to New York City when it derailed, according to Amtrak.

Most people got out of the train on their own, but rescuers are still searching for others, officials said.

“We do not know what happened here. We do not know why this happened,” Nutter said.

According to the Associated Press, the train was heading into a turn when it shook.

“The front of the train is really mangled,” AP employee Paul Cheung, who was on the train, told his employer. “It’s a complete wreck. The whole thing is like a pile of metal.”

After the derailment, Amtrak suspended all service between New York and Philadelphia.

Patrick Murphy, who hosts MSNBC’s “Taking the Hill” and served in Congress from 2007 to 2011, said he was on the train. He posted dramatic photos on Twitter showing injured passengers and rescue workers.

Video apparently taken by another passenger shows people attempting to move in one of the damaged cars.

“I got you, OK,” one man says. “Keep crawling.”

“Where am I crawling to?” asks another man.

“Crawl forward, sir,” a third man replies.

Cheung told the AP that the train had “started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake.”

“Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake,” he said. “You could see people’s stuff flying over me.”

Cheung said he escaped from the back of his car. Some cars were tipped on their sides, and passengers tried to exit through the windows, he said.

Video from the scene showed some passengers being carried away in stretchers. Officials said about 120 emergency responders were there.

A National Transportation Safety Board team will arrive in the morning to investigate the derailment, the agency said.

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