Chicago Area Local News

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Investigators plan to interview crew members from the Amtrak train and freight train that crashed into each other, to determine how they both wound up on the same track.

The crash happened just before noon Friday near 48th Street and Shields Avenue. Most of the 187 passengers on board the Pere Marquette train coming in from Grand Rapids Mich., walked away unhurt. But 71 people had to be hospitalized.

Most of those injured were in stable or good condition, according to the Chicago Fire Department. At least five people were seriously injured. The most seriously hurt, were crew members in the passenger train's engine, which rode right up onto the back of the 20th and last car of a stopped Norfolk Southern freight train, crushing it beneath its hundred-ton weight. Among them was including a conductor who was pinned into the wreckage. 

Amtrak passengers, many of them carrying winter coats and luggage, streamed off the train with the help of rescue workers. Some held the hands of children; others were taken away on stretchers and backboards.

University of Chicago Medical Center spokesman John Easton said none of the 13 patients the hospital initially received had injuries that appeared to be life-threatening.

Cook County's Stroger Hospital cared for another 25 patients, all with minor injuries, spokesman Sean Howard said. At Advocate Christ Medical Center, spokeswoman Deb Song said six of the 10 patients there were to be treated and released, and the rest were in fair or stable condition.

Three people -- one Amtrak crew member and two passengers -- were hospitalized overnight, National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. All three had been released by Saturday evening, according to Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.

The Amtrak train's engineer told investigators that after he switched tracks as instructed by a dispatcher, he accelerated to 40 mph; when he saw the freight train, he applied his brakes and hit the stationary train at between 33-35 mph, Sumwalt said. It took 9 seconds from the moment the engineer hit the brakes and the collision with the freight train, the NTSB official said.

Sumwalt added that the crash caused $1.3 million in damage.

A team of nine NTSB investigators have begun trying to pinpoint the cause of the collision between freight and passenger trains which, on normal days, safely share the stretch of track just south of U.S. Cellular Field.

Investigators want to know if the Amtrak train ran a red signal, or if its brakes failed, or if the freighter stopped where it shouldn't have. 

Officials say the main focus now is prevention.

"Our purpose in being here is to investigate the accident thoroughly to determine what happened so that we can keep it from happening again," Sumwalt said Saturday.

Saturday's investigation into the train crash focused into whether the signal at the site of the accident was working properly.

"We will know what that signal was displaying before the train approached and when it passed that signal," Sumwalt said.

"If we uncover information that is urgent in nature; if we find something in the next few days that is a safety deficiency, we can, and we will issue an urgent safety recommendation," Sumwalt added.

Investigators are now analyzing a security video from a camera installed on a nearby light pole. They are also in the process of retrieving the locomotive event recorder.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board say the investigation into the crash may take as long as 12 months. They say they have to analyze all data and evidence pertinent to the accident even if it was determined it was caused by human error.

The event recorder that officials are reviewing is similar to the black box found on airplanes. 

"That will give us a lot of information, like what the train was doing, the speed and when the brakes were applied," spokesman Keith Holloway said Saturday.

The damage to the passenger train was mostly to its engine, where some of the five Amtrak workers aboard were, authorities said. The train's three double-decker passenger cars remained upright.

The employees in the locomotive were the train's operating engineer and a relief engineer, Sumwalt said.

"Our task here is to collect the perishable data (at the scene) that might go away after snow and sleet and time," Sumwalt said.

No one was in the portion of the Norfolk Southern freight train that was struck, and neither of the two workers aboard was hurt. The freight train was traveling from Elizabeth, N.J., to Chicago.
Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband said he had no details about what caused the accident or what the freight train was carrying.

The Chicago Tribune reported Saturday that a dispatcher in Michigan told the Amtrak train to slow down, prepare to switch tracks and proceed with caution as it approached Chicago's Union Station.

The train's crew did as it was told, but still slammed into the freight train about a mile later. The Amtrak train applied its emergency brakes as it approached the freight train, but wasn't able to stop before the impact, the newspaper said.

The freight train had just received instructions from the same dispatch center to proceed toward its Chicago destination.

Holloway said Saturday that investigators were still reviewing what happened and couldn't comment on the newspaper's report. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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