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CNN Live Today

Amtrak Derailment Leaves Four Dead

Aired April 19, 2002 - 12:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Federal investigators are on the scene of a deadly Amtrak derailment. Four people were killed in yesterday's crash in Putnam County. The train's engineer survived and investigators hope he can help them better understand what went wrong. Our Mark Potter is live from Putnam County with the latest from there. Mark.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, again. There has been a little news made here, preliminary as it might be. Just a short while ago, investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board, the NTSB, told us that they have talked informally with the engineer of the train behind me that derailed yesterday afternoon, and they said that the engineer told them that he put the emergency brakes on the train as it was moving at full speed because he saw a problem ahead on the track itself.

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GEORGE BLACK, NTSB BOARD MEMBER: For your information, we are interviewing them this afternoon. Our operations person is. I understand that he saw a misalignment in the track that caused him to react by putting on his brakes. We obviously will be looking very carefully at that observation.

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POTTER: Now the lead investigator expanded on that a little bit. He said the engineer described the problem with the track as a sun kink, meaning that it had buckled up perhaps because of the heat. Investigators say that a track misalignment would be enough clearly to cause a derailment, but they caution that this is all so preliminary and they are in no position at all to draw any conclusions. They have a full investigation ahead of them to make.

They need to look at the trains that went by here. There were several trains that went by on the tracks earlier in the day. They had no problems but they're going to look at the train that went by before this one to see if it may have left any problems on the track as it went ahead. They're not saying that that happened, but these are the kinds of things they're looking at, the quality of the track, the engineering, the wheels.

They've got a lot to go but this information from the engineer is certainly important and they are going to follow up on that. The train will be here probably four to five days before they can clear the area, and they are now saying that 21 cars were derailed. This is a work in progress and the numbers on this have been shifting every hour almost, and it's happened again.

It looks like 14 passenger cars derailed and seven cars behind these here that were carrying the cars. This is an auto train and the cars of the passengers were behind. They're going to look at that too, whether the fact that all the cars were behind the passenger trains and whether all that weight in the back could have caused the cars ahead, the passenger cars, to derail when there was a sudden stop. Lots of work to do, but at least a preliminary finding that has created a lot of interest and it involves the engineer who says that he stopped the train because he saw a problem with the tracks. Back to you.

WHITFIELD: All right, Mark. So no definitive conclusion on what caused it. You made that very clear, but it sounds like they want to look a bit further on whether that misalignment in the track could have caused a problem or if even pulling the hand brake could have caused the derailment.

POTTER: All of those are factors, yes absolutely. Pulling the brake, stopping the car, having all those heavy cars in the back push against the lighter cars in the front, was there a track problem? Did the engineer see it correctly? Who knows? All of that's ahead, but they have a pretty good lead now from this engineer.

WHITFIELD: OK, thanks, Mark. All right, emergency brake. I think I just said hand brake, didn't I? Anyway, pulling that emergency brake. Thanks very much, Mark Potter from Putnam County in Florida.

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