Nearly 50 hurt as two trains collide in Connecticut

Nearly 50 hurt as two trains collide in Connecticut

uk.reuters.com

Nearly 50 people were injured on Friday when two commuter trains collided during evening rush hour near the Connecticut town of Fairfield, shutting down Amtrak service between New York and Boston indefinitely, police and transit officials said.

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Anita Shrum, a spokeswoman for Bridgeport Hospital, said one person was seriously injured but the other 21 people it had received could be described as "walking wounded" with a variety of injuries. "They are doing OK, they are very stable," Shrum said.

Dianne Auger, a spokeswoman for St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, said one of the 27 people taken there was in serious condition with head and neck injuries. Commuter trains on this busy commuter line to New York typically carry up to 300 passengers.

The number of injured could rise because hospital officials were told to prepare to receive up to 180 patients total.

The accident occurred when an eastbound train on the Metro-North commuter rail line derailed and collided with a train headed in the opposite direction near the suburban town of Fairfield, said spokesman Aaron Donovan of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the railroad.

As you can see from this video, this was not a major derailment probably due to the speed of the trains. They apparently made contact and slid across each other rather than tipping over, which would have certainly caused deaths and major injuries.



They dont know at this point what caused it, mechanical failure, a mistake/accident or something deliberate.

uk.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yikes, thanks for posting. My cousin's husband takes this train regularly and their house is near there. Small world...

As an avid consumer of disaster news I have to say this one is rather disappointing. The trains didn't even "collide" in the sense that they were on the same track and hit eachother head on, they just scraped each other on the side a little bit and didn't even flip over... boring.

Hope the victims will be fine. God bless them.

Hope the victims will be fine. God bless them.