A commuter train operated by Metro-North derailed early on Sunday morning, sending seven passenger cars toppling off tracks and nearly plunging them into the conjunction of the Harlem and Hudson rivers. (See photo on left). Four people were killed and 67 were injured.
The train, which was traveling from Poughkeepsie and carrying about 150 customers, jumped the tracks at a curve near the Spuyten Duyvil Station in the Bronx, just a few miles north of its destination at Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal.
“That is a dangerous area on the track just by design,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in a press conference following the 7:20 AM accident. “The trains are going about 70 miles an hour coming down the straight part of the track. They slow to about 30 miles per hour to make that sharp curve.
“It's not that we have a curve here,” he continued, implying that speed was the cause of the catastrophe. “We've always had this configuration but we didn't have accidents, so there has to be another factor.”
Click “next” to read more and see pictures from the deadly derailment.
Photos provided by AP Images.
According to a third-party claims adjuster with more than 40 years of experience in the railroad industry, insurance fallout from a derailment may involve excess liability, wrongful death, property damage and rolling stock damage claims against the railroad company. Most railroads are self-insured for this kind of coverage. An Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) spokeswoman confirms the company is self-insured up to $25 million.
In the photo, first responders gather around the derailment on Dec. 1, 2013. FDNY reported “multiple injuries” in the train derailment, and 130 firefighters were on the scene.
Passenger train claims would mostly involve personal injuries, and the insured cost of such an event can go into the millions, says the adjuster, depending on the range of injuries. Officials say some of the victims of the weekend's crash suffered compound fractures, and one person may be paralyzed from the waist down.
The Metro-North train was operating in “push” mode, or with the locomotive at its rear, which the TPA says tends to involve more personal injuries when an accident occurs.
Above, an Amtrak train, top, traveling on an unaffected track, passes the derailed Metro-North commuter train. The Metro-North train derailed on a curved section of track early Sunday, coming to rest just inches from the water. Police divers searched the waters to make sure no passenger had been thrown in, as other emergency crews scoured the surrounding woods.
The New York Post reports the driver of Sunday's wrecked train, a 20-year MTA veteran with a clean safety record, stated that he attempted to apply the brakes before the derailment, but they failed.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has sent an event recorder from the train to Washington for analysis. A spokesperson for the Board says it may take more than a week to investigate the train's speed, brake application and throttle setting at the time of the crash.
A freight train carrying garbage derailed at the same spot on July 18 and damaged 1,500 feet of track, records the MTA.
In the photo, emergency personnel remove a body from the scene of the derailment on Sunday. At least four people were killed.
The Metro-North Hudson Line, which had a ridership of almost 16 million last year, suffered numerous mishaps in 2013, including a passenger train derailment on May 17 that caused $18.5 million in damages, a track foreman who was fatally hit by a train on May 28 and a power outage in September that affected 132,000 passengers daily.
In the photo, injured people are tended to by first responders near the site of the derailment on Sunday.
The previous major train derailment in North America occurred in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July, killing 50 people.
Above, viewed from Manhattan, first responders and others work at the scene of Sunday's derailment.
The Federal Railroad Administration says that more than 3,000 train accidents occur in the U.S. every year.
As a safety measure, Metro-North is in the process of installing control systems that automatically apply brakes if a train engineer fails to respond to an excessive speed alert.
In the photo, cranes lift the derailed Metro-North train car on Monday, Dec. 2, 2013. Federal authorities began righting the cars Monday morning as they started an exhaustive investigation into what caused the incident.
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