Amtrak Train Derails After Hitting Truck; 13 Believed Dead
The train slammed into the truck, which was loaded with heavy steel bars, at a crossing, then careened off the tracks shortly after 9:30 p.m.
Amtrak spokesman Lee Bullock said the crash impact drove the two locomotives back into two non-passenger cars separating it from the first sleeper car. The second locomotive penetrated the sleeping car, and leaking diesel fuel ignited a fire that burned through the sleeper, Bullock said.
Cy Gura, a safety engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board at the scene, described the truck driver, who was treated at a hospital, as "very sad and upset. He felt he did whatever he thought he could do to clear the train track but he didn't do it."
The driver, whom Gura did not identify, said he did not see the train as he approached the tracks. Just as he started driving across the tracks, "the flashing lights turn on," Gura said, and the driver saw "the train coming and he tried to get his tractor-trailer across ... and the train struck him."
Crew members clambered atop overturned cars and the two derailed engines — one was split in half — searching through an eerie, smoky haze for trapped passengers. Firefighters doused flames on one of the engines and another car.
Rescue crews continued their search of the train on Tuesday, looking for six people unaccounted for.
"To find survivors in the wreckage would be pretty unlikely," Bourbonnais Fire Chief Mike Harshbarger said.
He said all of the dead were aboard one sleeper car, where rescue workers were digging by hand through debris. All the other cars had been searched, he said. Harshbarger said the double-deck sleeper car was broken in the middle, and much of it had been damaged by fire.
The train, named the City of New Orleans, was bound for New Orleans.
