Personal Injury Law

California Metrolink Train Accident Caused By Engineer's Error

By Kirk Bernard, Esq.

The county?s deadliest rail disaster in 15 years was caused by a commuter train engineer who ran a stop signal. The California train accident killed 25 people and it took nearly a day to find all the bodies.

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Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said that a preliminary investigation found that "it was a Metrolink engineer that failed to stop at a red signal and that was the probable cause" of Friday's collision with a freight train in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. "When two trains are in the same place at the same time somebody's made a terrible mistake," said Tyrrell. The engineer was one of the 25 dead. Of the 25 people killed in the wreck, many had been in the front car of the Metrolink train, which was crushed in the wreck.

In addition to the 25 dead, 135 people were injured, and 81 of those were transported to hospitals in serious or critical condition. Many were described as having crush injuries.

One firefighter who pulled bodies from the wreckage said he had never seen such devastation. "We saw bodies where the metal had been pushed together and ... we cut them out piece by piece. They were trapped in the metal," he said.

Full post as published by Seattle Injury Blog on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).