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Terrified passengers were sent flying through the air along with their luggage when a Toronto-bound train derailed Sunday, killing three engineers and injuring 32 passengers — three of them seriously, The Canadian Press reports.
A slight “bump” followed by utter chaos was how one passenger described the harrowing crash of train No. 92.
The time between the train leaving the tracks and it slamming to the ground was only about 10 seconds, but it felt like “forever,” said Deanna Villella of Welland, Ont.
“The train just flipped on its side and it just kept going. I didn’t know what was happening,” Villella said.
“Everybody’s stuff was flying by and people were flying by. Everything was crashing and people were screaming.”
The six-car train, which had originated in Niagara Falls, Ont., derailed at 3:30 pm in Burlington — about 100 metres from where a freight train derailed some four years ago.
Area residents described a chaotic scene of emergency vehicles, sirens blaring and helicopters buzzing overhead one of Canada’s busiest rail corridors.
The locomotive and one passenger car flipped onto their sides and crashed into a small trackside building. Another passenger car was leaning precariously, making for a frantic rescue operation. There was concern that diesel fuel would leak from the locomotive, but that didn’t occur.
Three remaining cars were upright and vacant.
The three dead Via engineers — one a trainee — were riding in the cab of the locomotive. When asked if the trainee was the one driving, emergency officials said they didn’t have that information.
A fourth Via worker was also injured.
Amid the twisted metal and debris emergency crews scrambled to pull passengers to safety. Firefighters cut into the metal frames of the cars and removed windows. Some passengers were carried away on boards and stretchers while others, looking dazed and battered, were led out of the wreckage by emergency workers.
The train’s manifest listed 75 passengers. Although only 50 had been located as of Sunday night, Halton Police Chief Gary Crowell said it wasn’t clear that the manifest was accurate. A sweep of the area did not turn up any injured passengers.
“Quite often people will self-evacuate,” he said. “They’ll determine that they don’t need to stay at the site or require minimal treatment and will walk away.”
The bodies of the three engineers were removed from the wreckage around 8 p.m. Their names weren’t immediately released pending notification of family.
Via’s chief operating officer called the derailment “tragic.”
“We’re a relatively small company, we’re a family, we know everyone by name,” John Marginson said at the scene. “We certainly feel for the families of the colleagues that we lost.”