HOBOKEN, New Jersey — A commuter train plowed into a station in New Jersey at the height of Thursday’s morning rush hour, killing a woman on the platform and injuring more than 100 people as it brought down part of the roof and scattered debris over the concourse.
Witnesses described terrifying scenes as the front of the train smashed through the track stop at high speed and into the Hoboken terminal, toppling support columns and creating chaos at one of the busiest transit hubs in the New York City area.
“We have no indication that this is anything other than a tragic accident, but … we’re going to let the law enforcement professionals pursue the facts,” New Jersey Gov. Christie said at a news conference in Hoboken alongside New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Train No. 1614 originated in the town of Spring Valley, New York, and was at the end of its hour-long journey when it crashed.
The engineer driving the train was injured and taken to a hospital but later released, officials said. They did not provide details of his injuries.
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board vice chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr told a separate news conference in Hoboken that investigators would retrieve the event recorder, which tracks speed, braking and other data, from the rear of the train on Thursday night.
She said the train was operating in a “push-pull configuration” in which locomotive-hauled trains can be driven from either end. The train had an engine that was pushing four cars including the controlling, or cab, car in front, officials said.
“Our investigation will continue here on scene for seven to 10 days,” Dinh-Zarr said.
The New Jersey medical examiner’s office identified the victim as Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, 34, of Hoboken. The woman was a former employee in the Brazilian legal department of SAP, the technology company said in a statement. Her LinkedIn page said she was a corporate lawyer who attended Florida International University.
Christie said 108 people were injured. The train was on track five when it hit the Hoboken terminal building at about 08:45 a.m.
Cuomo said it was obvious the train came into the station too fast, but it was unclear why. The cause could be human error or technical failure, Cuomo said. He added that it was too early to say whether an anti-collision system known as positive train control, or PTC, could have prevented the crash. PTC is designed to halt a train if the driver misses a stop signal and advocates cite it for helping to combat human error.
The crash renews focus on the mandatory anti-collision system that has been plagued with lengthy, contentious delays. According to a report by NJ Transit to the Federal Railroad Administration for the first half of 2016, the public transport system does not have PTC in operation on its 326-mile network.
New Jersey Transit ranked second for the most train accident reports nationwide for commuter railroads from January 2007 through June 2016, behind Amtrak.
New Jersey Transit had 271 accidents, or 18 percent of the total, compared with Amtrak’s 44 percent, according to data from the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis.
Mike Larson, who works as a machinist for NJ Transit, was 30 feet away from the train just before it slammed into the platform. He told The Journal News of Westchester County, New York, that the train’s speed appeared to be about 30 mph.
“It’s hard to believe,” said Larson, whose pants were stained with a victim’s blood. “I’ve never seen anything like that in 29 years.”
The speed limit in the station is 10 mph, the NTSB’s Dinh-Zarr told reporters.
The terminal, listed on the New Jersey Registry of Historic Places, was designed in the Beaux Arts style and construction finished in 1907. It lies on the Hudson River’s west bank across from New York City. Its station is used by many commuters traveling into Manhattan from New Jersey and New York state.
Hoboken is the last stop on the lines it serves.
A couple of hundred emergency workers spent the morning shuttling in and out of the station, some carrying the injured on stretchers to ambulances outside. Federal investigators later began examining the wreckage.
Linda Albelli, a 62-year-old from Closter, New Jersey, was sitting in one of the train’s rear cars and described how she had felt something was wrong a moment before the impact.
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God, he’s not slowing up, and this is where we usually stop,’” Albelli said. “‘We’re going too fast,’ and with that there was this tremendous crash.”
Jaime Weatherhead-Saul, who boarded the train in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, was standing between the first and second cars when the train hurtled into the terminal’s concourse, causing part of the building’s roof to collapse.
“The train just felt like it never stopped,” she said. “There were people right in front of me that had fallen on top, that had toppled over one another, and they had some injuries. The people in front of me were badly injured. And then we just heard people screaming in the first car.”
Mike Scelzl was sitting in the first car, not paying attention, when the train suddenly derailed.
“When we pulled in, there was screaming,” he said. “Not screams of hurt but screams of shock.”
In the station, William Blaine, a Norfolk Southern train engineer, had just gotten off a freight train and was getting coffee when he heard what sounded like a bomb going off.
“When I ran over, I practically stepped over a deceased person,” he said. “I saw the body.”
The crash sent people sprinting for safety. Erica Schaffer, 35, was walking to her office nearby after getting breakfast when she heard a huge crash, followed by people running out of the station, some screaming, some bleeding.
Injured passengers trapped inside the first car managed to escape through the train’s windows, as fellow commuters and first responders helped pull them out.
“Once we got off we noticed that people were stuck and they had to come through the windows,” Weatherhead-Saul said. “And the conductor came off and he was completely bloodied.”
Passengers toward the rear of the train were more fortunate.
Amy Krulewitz, who was in the fourth car, said the doors opened and commuters were able to walk off in an orderly manner. When she saw the train’s first two cars, she was “stunned.”
“I had no idea what the front of a train could look like,” she said.
Several people, possibly commuters who had been waiting on the platform, were trapped under rubble, several witnesses said, although officials said they were quickly freed and taken to local hospitals.
Dozens of people were carried out on stretchers, as emergency personnel streamed in and out of the station.
“When we got on the platform there was nowhere to go,” Albelli said. “The ceiling had come down. There was just so much, a lot of people in need of attention.”
As investigators searched for clues to the cause of the accident, some said it could and should have been prevented.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat on a Senate committee that includes transportation matters, said the crash was “hauntingly similar” to past tragedies involving insufficient or unsafe practices or equipment. Blumenthal has advocated for the roll out of the anti-collision system.
“This catastrophe was caused by a runaway train — traveling too fast and out of control. There is no excuse,” Blumenthal said in a statement. He said there was an urgent need for better safety technology, new equipment and improved training.
The historic green-roofed Hoboken Station is served by NJ Transit commuter trains connecting much of New Jersey with the country’s largest city, as well as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson subway-like system known as PATH, a light rail and ferry service to New York.
In May 2011, a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey train crashed at Hoboken station, injuring more than 30 people. An investigation by the NTSB determined excessive speed was the main cause of the accident.
An NTSB official said the agency would look at similarities between that crash and Thursday’s.
The Hoboken crash was the latest in a string of fatal train crashes in the United States. The worst in recent years involved an Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight people and injuring more than 200.