Watch the news conference live at 3 p.m. in the player above.
Federal investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board are slated to provide an update Monday on the investigation into Saturday’s deadly Amtrak train derailment involving a train that originated in Chicago.
The westbound Empire Builder was traveling to Seattle when it left the tracks about 4 p.m. Saturday near Joplin, Montana, killing three people and leaving seven hospitalized over the weekend. Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said the train was carrying about 141 passengers and 16 crew members. It had two locomotives and 10 cars, eight of which derailed, with some tipping onto their sides.
Railroad safety expert David Clarke, director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee, said the two locomotives and two cars at the front of the train reached the switch and continued on the main track, but the remaining eight cars derailed. He said it was unclear whether some of the last cars moved onto the second track.
“Did the switch play some role? It might have been that the front of the train hit the switch and it started fish-tailing and that flipped the back part of the train,” Clarke said.
Another possibility was a defect in the rail, Clarke said, noting that regular testing doesn’t always catch such problems. He said speed was not a likely factor because trains on that line have systems that prevent excessive speeds and collisions.
Allan Zarembski, director of the University of Delaware’s Railway Engineering and Safety Program, said he didn’t want to speculate but suspected the derailment stemmed from an issue with the train track, equipment, or both.
Railways have “virtually eliminated” major derailments by human error after the implementation of positive train control nationwide, Zarembski said.
Matt Jones, a BNSF Railway spokesman said at a news conference that the track where the accident occurred was last inspected on Thursday.
A 14-member National Transportation Safety Board team including investigators and railroad signal specialists will be looking into the cause of the accident on a BNSF Railway track, NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said.
Law enforcement on Sunday said the officials from the NTSB, Amtrak and BNSF were at the accident scene just west of Joplin, where the tracks cut through vast, golden brown wheat fields that were recently harvested. Several large cranes were brought to the tracks that run roughly parallel to U.S. Highway 2, along with a truckload of gravel and new railroad ties.
Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn expressed condolences to those who lost loved ones and said the company is working with the NTSB, Federal Railroad Administration and local law enforcement, sharing their “sense of urgency” to determine what happened.
from NBC Chicago https://ift.tt/3odPlVo
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