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Posted by
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on Thu Feb 5 09:25:48 2015
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The Wall Street Journal
U.S.
NY Region
As Train Burned, Riders Waited to Get Out
Some Passengers Question Metro-North Evacuation Procedures; ‘No One Said Anything, but That We Had Hit a Car’
By Josh Dawsey
Updated Feb. 4, 2015 8:44 p.m. ET
The express to Chappaqua was about 45 minutes out of Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday night when passengers felt a jolt as the train passed through the Westchester County hamlet of Valhalla.
Within three minutes, smoke filled the first car. The train was on fire.
“The flames from the first car were soaring above the height of the car,” said Peter Ginsberg, a 52-year-old commuter from Chappaqua.
Six people died, and at least a dozen were hurt as the eight-car Metro-North Railroad train plowed into a sport-utility vehicle at a road crossing about 6:30 p.m., shattering what had been a quiet trip home through a snowy suburban landscape.
The dead included the woman behind the wheel of the SUV. She was identified by friends and co-workers as Ellen Schaeffer Brody, 49, of Scarsdale, N.Y.
Passengers’ accounts of the scene onboard largely depended on where they had been sitting. Those with seats toward the front described chaos, as people rushed to the rear.
Those farther back, away from the fire and smoke, described the situation as tense but orderly.
Many said they felt forced to make decisions with little information from train workers. It was more than 10 minutes before some passengers could get out.
In the first minutes after the crash, some passengers tried to open emergency exits but were warned away by others, who were afraid the “third rail,” which powers the train, was still electrified.
Some passengers secured a fire extinguisher, but they struggled to pass it forward to the front car, Mr. Ginsberg said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority didn’t respond to questions about the evacuation on Wednesday, citing an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The train had two crew members on board—an engineer to operate the train and a conductor. An MTA spokeswoman said the railroad’s annual disaster drills included evacuations.
Train crews generally have two to five crew members, depending on the number of riders and the number of scheduled stops, said a person familiar with the matter.
Two crew members can be enough for safe operation, and it isn’t uncommon for Metro-North to have only one conductor on an evening express train, this person said.
Those in the first car bore the brunt of the crash. Some passengers jumped from windows. Up front, people who could move started heading back, blocking the doors from car to car, shoving into one another, yelling and screaming, passengers said.
But in the third car, passengers felt a bump and weren’t too worried, said passenger Justin Kaback.
“It’s always a bumpy ride,” he said.
But the atmosphere changed as passengers from the front crowded his car.
“What’s the matter, why are you coming back here,” people yelled, he said.
Over the intercom, the conductor told passengers that the train had hit a car. But, passengers said, he said little else.
The two crew members went through the train, helping some people to safety and checking to see if others were injured, said Tony Bottalico, the union head for conductors and engineers.
Marnie Rosenberg, a passenger near the back, said the worker she saw appeared “very frazzled.”
“No one said anything about evacuating, emergency doors, emergency windows,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “No one said anything, but that we had hit a car.”
Mr. Bottalico said the evacuation wasn’t ideal because of the snowy conditions and that he sympathized with passengers. But he added the main goal was to save lives and coordinate with emergency crews.
“He didn’t want to create mass panic. He told them what was necessary but no more until he got them evacuated,” Mr. Bottalico said of the conductor. “There’s always chaos. You try to manage the chaos.”
When the train eventually shut off power, passengers in the third car fell silent, Mr. Kaback said.
Farther back, people in Ms. Rosenberg’s car were calling relatives, asking for rides.
“We had no idea this major fire was going on in the front of the train,” she said. “We just heard a thump and the train stopped. We wondered, what just happened?”
Ms. Rosenberg said she learned of the deaths on the news.
“If everybody started to panic it would have been very difficult to get off—that’s when I got nervous,” Mr. Kaback said. “Even though many suspected the truth, people tried to stay calm.
“One lady heard somebody say there was fire—she was like, ‘Don’t even repeat that, I’m going to flip out,’” he said.
At 6:28 p.m., Mr. Ginsberg called his wife. He had moved to the third car. Some people had jumped out, he said, but most were still waiting on instructions.
Ms. Rosenberg said she didn’t want to get off the train until someone told her to do so. She stayed on for 10 or 15 minutes until a firefighter helped her out.
Photo of Metro North crash. handout from Justin Kaback ENLARGE
Photo of Metro North crash. handout from Justin Kaback Photo: Justin Kaback
Eventually, firefighters and others told Mr. Ginsberg to get out, and he jumped into the snow. Some passengers used ladders to evacuate.
By then, ambulances had arrived. Workers separated those who were injured. One man had a jacket wrapped on his head to cover the blood.
“There were just ridiculous amounts of first responders everywhere,” said Kary Williams, the general manager at The Cliffs, a nearby rock climbing gym where many passengers headed from the crash site to warm up.
Mr. Ginsberg called his wife again at 6:39 and said he was OK. He jumped into a car with a medical student after talking to a friend, Chris Reddy, who was riding in the first car.
A relative for Mr. Reddy said he wasn’t available to talk Wednesday. He had jumped out a window and remained shaken.
Mr. Kaback texted his girlfriend and walked for an hour until friends picked him up.
Ms. Rosenberg walked north, along with scores of other passengers, looking for a ride home.
—Sophia Hollander, Liz Rappaport and Andrew Tangel contributed to this article.
Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@dowjones.com
Copyright ©2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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