Twisted wreckage from the Amtrak derailment

March 16, 1999
Web posted at: 5:30 a.m. EST (1030 GMT)

In this story: Rail cars strewn across site NTSB to investigate Flames inside passenger cars Impact heard miles away RELATED STORIES, SITES

BOURBONNAIS, Illinois (CNN) -- Firefighters combed the charred wreckage of an Amtrak train for survivors early Tuesday, after the train slammed into a truck at a rail crossing south of Chicago late Monday.

Officials reported that eight people were dead and more than 120 injured, several critically. The train was carrying some 196 passengers and 18 crew members, authorities said. So far, 188 passengers have been accounted for.

Ambulances and more than 200 emergency workers converged on the scene, setting up triage units at the accident site to treat injured passengers and to make arrangements for them to be transported to the hospital.

Rebecca Wilder, a spokeswoman for St. Mary's Hospital in nearby Kankakee, Illinois, said the hospital had treated some 80 patients, including 13 with life threatening injuries. Wilder said the hospital was expecting more patients within the next few hours.

A spokesman at Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee said 44 victims were brought in. According to a nursing supervisory, the injured included one person with an amputated foot and another with head injuries.

Riverside Medical Center spokesman Mike Silgen said the hospital had activated a "disaster plan" and that its entire staff of nearly 50 doctors had been called in.

Another hospital spokeswoman said three Red Cross Centers have been set up in the area to treat passengers with minor injuires.

Police Chief Joseph Beard said most of the injured had been in a sleeper car, which had been following behind the engine and two baggage cars.

Several of the train's 14 cars lay twisted across the tracks. Smoke billowed from the wreckage, as rescuers searched the overturned cars, some blackened from a fire that erupted after impact. Emergency workers climbed atop the overturned cars and engines -- one of which was split in half upon impact, officials said.

At the site, rescue workers carried survivors from the wrecked cars to a staging area, at times lifting them through an opening cut in a chain-link fence to the staging area.

The National Transportation Safety Board is beginning an investigation of the accident.

Ed St. Louis, captain of Borbonnais Fire Protection District, said the tractor-trailer that collided with the train came out of the nearby Birmingham Steel Company and was loaded with steel bars used for reinforcing concrete.

The truck driver's condition was not known, Beard said. However, the cab of his truck was not struck by the train, according to reporters on the scene.

Fire erupted after the collision, authorities said.

"They had two cars on fire right away and also they were dealing immediately with extraction," said Alan Ramsey, chief of the fire department in nearby Herscher.

The train, known as the City of New Orleans, runs between Chicago and New Orleans. It derailed about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Chicago at about 9:40 p.m. Monday near Bourbonnais, a police dispatcher said.

Borbonnais is a rural and industrial town with an area population of about 100,000.

A witness to the accident told WBBM-AM radio that she could see flames inside several of the passenger cars.

Amtrak spokeswoman Debbie Hare said the train was made up of two engines and 14 passenger cars.

Relatives and friends hear news of the crash

Some area residents several miles from the collision reported hearing the impact, which they said sounded like an explosion.

Don O'Dell, who lives a block away from the crash, was watching television when he heard the collision at about 9:40 p.m. "The windows rattled, we got up and looked around to see what was going on," the 36-year-old said early Tuesday.

According to RailWatch, a Texas-based coalition of 300 local officials from across the country, rail crossings were the sites of more than 500 deaths and 1,800 injuries in 1998.

A study by the group said that a train collides with a motor vehicle every 90 minutes in the United States.

Doug Cummings of WMAQ and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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