Amtrak derailment in Washington State near Seattle...

On the first run of the new service...

Six dead and a few more in critical care. No one in a car on the freeway has died.

My first thought was anger over the GOP/Trump prioritizing tax cuts for the rich instead of investing in infrastructure. Sure enough Trump used it to call for infrastructure investment as if it's our fault they have not acted.

This was a new service, rapid train, mass transit is badly needed here so that's another setback.

I was just reading about this

What a horrible thing to happen. I'm amazed that no one on the freeway was killed as well.

All I can say is I hope this isn't one of those engineering vs management issues, where engineers had a concern about something and management pushed them to do it anyway...

I also hope (even more) that this doesn't turn out to be due to an act of sabotage.

Tacoma PD just had a press conference. He said there might be more dead in the rail cars so six dead is not a confirmed number, it could be higher. It's unsafe for bodies to be removed until the cars are stabilized. No one alive is still in the wreckage.

In the pictures you can see some of the rail cars have their tops opened by the fire department can openers. They look like open sardine cans.

Correction: Five vehicles and two semis on the freeway were struck.

I also wanted to add the emergency services did an incredible job, and lots of people in their cars got out to help right away.

Looking at the pictures from above, I'm going to suggest the train was going too fast, came around a bend which was just in front of the bridge and the engine came off the track and kept going forward down the embankment, with the cars behind folding up like an accordion falling off on both sides of the overpass.

I am reminded of a story after a derailment back east where the train engineers were under pressure to keep to a schedule that required unsafe driving. I'll try to find it. I could be conflating memories though.

Positive train control wasn't activated. That was an issue in the other derailment. It automatically slows a train going too fast.

According to a monitoring service, the train was going 81 mph. The suggested speed in that stretch is 79, so while it may have been speeding, it wasn't much. There is news reporting at the moment that the train may have struck something on the track, but I heard the engineer on a recorded call to what sounded like railroad dispatch and he didn't mention hitting anything in the bit aired by NPR.

The mayor of one small town on this higher speed route was vehemently opposed to the train coming through his town, predicting certain fatalities, though his worry was for vehicles misjudging the at-grade crossings (not seeing a train, and so blowing through the crossing). I don't think anyone predicted this situation.

On a side note, I have a friend from Portland who was up to Seattle yesterday for the Seahawk game and was leaving Seattle "this morning." I have no idea if she drove or trained, nor whether she would have been on that 6 am run, but I haven't heard back from a messaged inquiry to her. I'm uneasy, to say the least. Hoping she got stuck having to drive to eastern Washington and down to Oregon and back west to Portland, and is just not wanting to use up her cell battery on the long drive. I-5 southbound is shut down for at least a day so the NTSB can investigate.

I hope your friend wasn't on that train, or is okay if she was.

They're showing the detours on the news now, Elaine, and they are way out of the way, like over through Gig Harbor! The east detour goes through Roy and Yelm! That's nuts!

Those are some incredibly long detours. Your friend is almost certainly not answering because they are still on the road.

Roxxsmom said:

I hope your friend wasn't on that train, or is okay if she was.

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Me, too.

MaeZe said:

They're showing the detours on the news now, Elaine, and they are way out of the way, like over through Gig Harbor! The east detour goes through Roy and Yelm! Those are some incredibly long detours. Your friend is almost certainly not answering because they are still on the road.

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I'm hopeful that's the case.

I'm guessing there are massive traffic delays, so if your friend drove, she's likely stuck in a huge traffic jam and can't check her texts or e-mail. Fingers crossed.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Yikes! How awful!

Glad the first responders got so many people out. We'll chant for those who died.

And yeah, Elaine, holding the hope that your friend was nowhere near at the time.

Don't think any of my WA relatives were near, but likewise holding the hope they weren't.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Thank you, everyone, for the positive thoughts. I just now heard from her. They did drive, and got caught up in the traffic. Only took them 5 hours to make it back. *whew!*

ETA
Annnnd, early news might have contained bad info (or later news does). The train WAS going 81, but now there is contradictory info that the speed limit on that trestle was 30. That's a HUGE misunderstanding/misstatement of info, and a ginormous mistake for 1) the engineer not to have known the limit, 2) the train not to have slowed itself, and/or 3) Amtrak monitors not to have radioed him. Something's off somewhere in the "fact" gathering.

Glad to hear they're OK, Elaine.

It looks from the pics that the engine went straight when the tracks turned. All the speeds though, are going to sort themselves out to something different. Like the 79 and 81 are general speeds for the route and maybe the 30mph will turn out to be some agency employee estimate that answered a reporter.

We'll find out soon enough.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Thanks for letting us know, Elaine. It can take 4 hours from Portland anyway, so an additional hour is reasonable under the unreasonable circumstances.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

ElaineA said:

Thank you, everyone, for the positive thoughts. I just now heard from her. They did drive, and got caught up in the traffic. Only took them 5 hours to make it back. *whew!*

ETA
Annnnd, early news might have contained bad info (or later news does). The train WAS going 81, but now there is contradictory info that the speed limit on that trestle was 30. That's a HUGE misunderstanding/misstatement of info, and a ginormous mistake for 1) the engineer not to have known the limit, 2) the train not to have slowed itself, and/or 3) Amtrak monitors not to have radioed him. Something's off somewhere in the "fact" gathering.

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It does sound like a design problem. The engineer may have known about it but apparently there is only a short distance one must get the train from 127 km/h to 48 km/h. Previous engineers on the test runs have complained about the distance in which they must decelerate.

I believe the 79 is the general speed on the track/route, but the 30 is the speed on the curve you can see going onto the bridge.

Same exact issue, at nearly the exact speeds, if that was what happened here, as the Metro-North crash a few years ago.

Apparently neither train had the PTC installed, because it's expensive to install wholesale across the entire country's train systems, so only some places have it.

I delayed posting this this morning, in case there were people here who were affected, but -

The mayor of one of the towns through which the rerouted trains travel warned earlier this month that the high-speed trains were dangerously close to cars and pedestrians.
"Come back when there is that accident, and try to justify not putting in those safety enhancements, or you can go back now and advocate for the money to do it, because this project was never needed and endangers our citizens," Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson told transportation officials in early December, according to Seattle's KOMO News.

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Link here

mccardey said:

I delayed posting this this morning, in case there were people here who were affected, but - Link here

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Ay. Normally I'd say those sorts of claims were hyperbole typical of the NIMBYism rail projects tend to face, but in this case the mayor turned out to be catastrophically, tragically correct. And on the opening day. Heads are gunna roll somewhere.

Albedo said:

Ay. Normally I'd say those sorts of claims were hyperbole typical of the NIMBYism rail projects tend to face, .

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Zackly. Was a time I'd have thought NIMBYism, but now I'm less inclined than I was to believe that our Fearless Leaders are leading through altruism...

I'm no longer sure they have the people's best interests at heart.

ETA: Except for you, Mayor Don Anderson of Lakewood.

Albedo said:

Ay. Normally I'd say those sorts of claims were hyperbole typical of the NIMBYism rail projects tend to face, but in this case the mayor turned out to be catastrophically, tragically correct. And on the opening day. Heads are gunna roll somewhere.

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He was not correct in identifying the issue. His issue was with the crossings but not the bends.

Xelebes said:

He was not correct in identifying the issue. His issue was with the crossings but not the bends.

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He said they were dangerously close to cars and pedestrians. And that they needed safety enhancements... Sounds right. What are we missing?

Right in so far as the train fell off the overpass negotiating the bends, the same overpass which separated the two flows of traffic and was the least of the mayor's worries at the time. It is at best coincidental that his words mention that the two are too close together.

Xelebes said:

Right in so far as the train fell off the overpass negotiating the bends, the same overpass which separated the two flows of traffic and was the least of the mayor's worries.

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Okay, but - safety (and the need for the trains) was his big worry, wasn't it? And that the safety issues hadn't been dealt with carefully enough? His predictions might have been wrong, but his concern seems well-placed.