TRAINER (Sputnik) — The lead engine of Amtrak Train 89 partially derailed Sunday morning after the train hit a piece of heavy equipment on the tracks south of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania en route to Georgia with 330 passengers and seven crew on board.
"As of now we have recovered the event data recorder, the forward-facing video and the inward-facing video from the locomotive to send to our laboratory in Washington, DC. Most of our team has arrived on-scene and we will be looking at mechanical, operations, signal, track, human performance and survival factors [during the investigation]," Frigo told reporters.
Frigo also confirmed two fatalities, including the operator of the equipment, which he described as a backhoe, but said he did not know the identity of the second person. The train's engineer and 35 passengers were hospitalized following the crash, but Frigo said he was not aware of the extent of their injuries. No train passengers were killed.
The derailment comes less than a year after another Amtrak train derailed in North Philadelphia, killing eight passengers and injuring over 200 others, including 11 who were critically injured. The NTSB determined that train was traveling at 102 miles per hour and that Automatic Train Control (ATC) — a computerized speed-limiting system that may have prevented the crash — was not activated.
Frigo noted he did not know if the ATC system was in place on the track where Amtrak Train 89 derailed.
