Over 100 Passengers Injured After Long Island Commuter Train Derails In Brooklyn, New York
(Brooklyn, New York January 4, 2017)
At approximately 8:20 a.m. this morning a Long Island Railroad Train derailed in Brooklyn, New York at the Atlantic Terminal. The derailment injured more than 100 unsuspecting passengers. The train was traveling from Far Rockaway, Queens when it struck the terminal track 6 bumping block resulting in the derailment of the first two cars.
The force of the derailment threw passengers throughout the rail cars. It also caused the passenger car to lose its axle, resulting in the rail piercing the bottom of the car. It is unclear the extent of injuries for the 100 plus injured passengers. However, reports from the scene said several people were bleeding from cuts and bruises. There were also passengers who were evacuated by stretcher.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) have both launched further investigations to determine why the operator did not stop the train.
This derailment comes only four months after the tragic September derailment in Hoboken, NJ, where a New Jersey Transit commuter train failed to slow down and stop at a stub track at the Hoboken Station. The Hoboken derailment killed three and injured over a hundred passengers.
There have been numerous prior accidents with the LIRRs operations. In October, 2016 sideswipe accident injured 33 passengers, four of them seriously, in New Hyde Park, NY when a northbound passenger train sideswiped a work train headed in the same direction. An earlier sideswipe incident in July, 2015 at the Jamaica Station in Queens, NY, fortunately resulted in no injuries.
Then, in March, 2008, at the same station, two cars of one train train jumped the tracks and collided with two cars of a second train, resulting in two dozen minor injuries.
Before that accident, in March, 2004, some cars of one train became uncoupled from their locomotive and plowed into cats of another train, seriously injuring four people and narrowly escaping an ensuing explosion when the unmanned train cars collided with a LIRR welding truck.
But none of those collisions came close to the horrible February, 1950 collision which killed 30 people were and injured another 80 as two Long Island trains collided head-on in Rockville Center, NY on Long Island.
