Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Passenger Train Derails In The Bronx; Paul Walker Dead From Fiery Car Crash; White House Healthcare.gov Working Smoothly; Four Dead In Bronx Train Derailment; Viewers Post Images Of Wreck Online

Aired December 01, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miguel Marquez, in for Fredricka Whitfield. These are the stories topping our news this hour.

Today, tragedy as a passenger train derails on one side of the busiest rail pass in the country of metro north train in the Bronx. It comes off the tracks around been killing four and injuring more than 60 others. What went wrong, live report from the scene coming right up.

And action star's death sending shock waves through Hollywood. Fast and Furious start, Paul Walker, died in the fiery car crash, what we know about his final moments. That too, coming up.

And after two months of blackouts, problems and crashes, is the Obamacare Web site finally fixed. Don't miss what you need to know about logging on.

We start in New York where investigators are trying to figure out why a train flipped off its derail near Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx. At least 67 other people are hurt and officials say 11 of those people are seriously injured.

Passenger Amanda Swanson took this picture inside the train and described the terrifying scene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA SWANSON, PASSENGER: I was just sitting on the train. I was in like I wasn't paying attention and things in particular. And all of a sudden, the train felt like a little more sideways than it should be. And by the time I looked up, it was completely going off the track. And there is just like the rubble from under the track like flying like I did all the emergency doors are open and I could hear people that were clearly wounded. But everybody, like eight or nine people in my car were all standing. Like I managed to retain all of my personal belongings so I called the cops as soon as I realized what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: Unbelievable story. New York's governor was on the scene not long after that derailment.

Governor Andrew Cuomo now joins us by phone. Governor, do you have an update on the dead or the injured? Have those numbers risen any?

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, NEW YORK CITY (via phone): The good news is the numbers haven't risen. We still have four people who were confirmed dead, unfortunately. We have 63 injured, 11 critical people we are keeping out on eye on. And so far, luckily, all 11 are still with us and they are stable.

MARQUEZ: And you hear that their condition is stabilizing and that is it hope at the moment those 11 will pull through?

CUOMO: That is our hope and they are stable at this time, Miguel, but we are not sure yet.

MARQUEZ: And I know you were at the scene earlier, you thought at the time that the scene was clear. Obviously, there are a lot of cars that were over and flipped. Are you absolutely 100 percent sure now that everyone is accounted for?

CUOMO: We are confident that there are no additional people or passengers who are in the train or around the train. The first responders obviously that was their first priority. They search with infrared equipment. They had specially trained dogs. It is hard to tell because you don't know who was on the train. There was no roster who was on the train so that the search this morning was quite extensive. And we confirmed at that time that four people have lost their lives and the critically injured were sent to a neighboring facilities.

As you said in the run up for the piece, the Spuyten Duyvil area, that is a dangerous area on the track just by design. The trains are going about 70 miles-an-hour coming down the straight part of the track. They slow to about 30 miles per hour to make that sharp curve as you correctly pointed out where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River. And that is a difficult area of the track, but that doesn't explain this either.

We are waiting for the NTSB to tell us exactly what happened. The trains have a black box on them similar to an airplane black box and that will give the speed of the train, whether or not the brakes were applied. And there was an earlier report that the operator suggested that the brakes failed. Normally, we look at the track conditions or the speed of the train, operator error. And we'll wait for NTSB on that. It should be about something later on this afternoon given turn towards cleaning up the site so we can have the service commence again. That is a very important line for us. And we want to get it up and running for tomorrow. So there is little impact on the commuters as possible.

MARQUEZ: It was officials who told us earlier that the conductors that he had applied the brakes and they seemed to fail. Do you have anything further on that? Is that now in question as to whether or not he applied the brakes?

CUOMO: That was a report that the operator stated that. I don't know if that was an official statement from the operator. The operator was injured. So, our first concern was getting the operator the appropriate medical attention. But I heard the same report at the site this morning that they suggested that he had put on the brakes but the failed. That is clearly a possibility. They said going from 70 miles an hour to 30 miles an hour is difficult. So that is a possibility.

There are other possibilities of course -- track condition, et cetera, operator error, equipment failure. And we'll wait for the NTSB and their report and the information from the black box, Miguel, which I think is going to be the most (INAUDIBLE). If the brakes were applied, the black box will tell us that. If the brakes were not applied, the black box would tell us that also. At one point there is an emergency braking device that kicks in. But we will get to more information on that from the NTSB.

MARQUEZ: And I understand that there are three metro north workers on there. I don't know if they were all operators, if they were conductors and operators, but do you know the condition of the operator himself or the other workers who were on that train?

CUOMO: Our understanding is at this time they are all stable. The operator is being treated. But we didn't believe they were life threatening. It was life-threatening situation to the extent one mind searches for good news in a situation like this. There were 100 to 150 people on the train. It is a train that left before, just before 6:00 this morning from Poughkeepsie, if this had been a work day, if this is in the middle of the week, you would have had hundreds and hundreds of people on that train. And to see the condition inside the train is breathtaking because as the train skidded along the dirt, it was picking up dirt and stones and were then being thrown throughout the car. So you can imagine what it would be like at that speed with the movement and the train itself rolling on the side. You then had this debris that was shooting through the cars. And it was serious debris of serious size. So, it could have been much, much worse.

To lose four people this way, days after thanksgiving and the holiday season truly is a tragedy and reminds us all how precious a gift life really is. These are four people who left their homes this morning thinking they were going to be back or it is just another day and it turned out to be their last. So, it is a sober reminder for us to keep in mind during this holiday season.

MARQUEZ: It is very, very tough to watch. And I also must commend your emergency services personnel who seem to be on the scene and on it very, very quickly both on the ground and in the water. It was impressive sight to see. And I'm sure you guys will be looking at this in the days ahead.

Governor Andrew Cuomo for us. Thank you very much and good luck to you.

CUOMO: Thank you, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: The national transportation safety board has sent a go team to the scene to investigate the accident. Let's get to the scene there with Alexandra Field. She joins us live.

Alexandra, if you could lay out exactly where that train is from where it left the tracks to where it end up by the water and then how far it is from the station as well, just physically, what does it look like out there?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. This is right about at the point where the Harlem River meets the Hudson River. There were eight cars on this train, seen cars derailing. The first car was stopping feet away from the water and just a little bit north of the train station it was headed for. It had come around the bend when it suddenly derailed. There is something that people here in the Bronx say they could hear happening out squealing and then the crash.

We do know, Miguel, as we have been reporting that four people were killed and that they were in the two cars that turned completely on their sides. We also know that three people were thrown from those two cars, tree of the people who were killed within the last hour. We have seen at least two of the victims who were killed taken away. Emergency workers have been out here. They have seen on scene all morning. We saw some stretchers that were wheeled out toward the area of the wreckage within the last hour and then wheeled away. So, they are heartbreaking images, a shot of reality of how this holiday weekend is ending for at least four families in a truly devastating way.

The New York fire department chaplain has been out here all morning along with New York City firefighters, police officers and transit officers. Now, of course, we are waiting for the arrival of the NTSB go team which will be examining the stretch of track and hopefully beginning to provide some answers for why this train derailed. We just heard New York State Governor Cuomo saying this is a dangerous area considering that curve and that speed with which some of the trains come through here. So certainly, the curve, the track condition and possible speed of the train are all things that they go will be looking at. But we can't get conclusions of what happened until they get on the ground and began to take a look at what we are seeing behind us here, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: Alexandra Field for us at the scene at this deadly crash. Thank you very much.

Now at least 67 people were hurt and rushed to the hospitals.

Nic Robertson is live at one of those hospitals, St. Barnabas in the Bronx.

Nic, what are you hearing about the injured at the moment? Nic, are you there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are being told by doctors here that they are treating 12 casualties from the crash. And what they say is that they have come in with a number of different injuries, two of them are critical. One has an open fracture on the leg, another with an open fracture across elbow, another gentleman described as being as having injuries to his vertebrae, a broke in back. That injury quite high concerns about the mobility that it will have with his arms, with his legs.

A young boy of 14 was brought in here as well. He had light injuries cuts and bruises and he has been treated and the hospital believed that he would be able to be released fairly soon.

We talked a little earlier with Dr. David Listman, in-charge of the emergency response here. And this is how he described some of the injuries they are seeing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DAVID LISTMAN, ST. BARNABAS HOSPITAL: I think the most critically ill patient is the one with the spinal cord injury and the one with the open fracture of the leg. That is a woman. Also a woman with the open fracture of the elbow. We have had quite a few people with fractures of the collar bone on the clavicle which is really common from being tossed around. There are facial injuries, head laceration, there are some minor head injury but no intracranial injury, nobody with bleeding inside their head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Well, another one of the injury they have here as well is a policewoman on her way to work on the train. She has broken ribs and a broken bone in her shoulders, what we have been told, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: Nic, it is absolutely incredible to see the pictures of that train and I mean despite the bad in injuries and deaths that more people were not killed. The blunt force trauma must have been immense as that train was coming to halt.

Nic Robertson in the Bronx for us. Thank you very much.

And just to give you a sense of how crucial these trains are to New York City. The NTSB rail lines move more than 82 million passengers a year. The Hudson line where this derailment occurred, it alone moves 16 million passengers a year. This is part of a key mass transit for the folks who lived in the distance suburbs who commute into the city. It is going to be snarl for them certainly tomorrow morning for anyone using this line to get into New York.

Another huge story we are following this hour the death of a Hollywood heavyweight actor Paul Walker dead at age 40. And we are learning more about the fiery car crash that killed him. CNN has obtained footage of the inferno itself taken by witnesses just moments after the crash.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)

MARQUEZ: Police say speed was a factor. The star of the fast and furious franchise was the passenger in the car. He and the driver were both killed.

CNN'S Paul Vercammen joins me now. Paul, what details are you learning about the crash?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Paul Walker and the driver were in a 2005 Porsche carrera GT. They hit a tree at an extremely high speed. And when the fire department arrived, this car was fully engulfed and it was absolutely mangled. It was just two minutes after the fire department arrived that they declared Paul Walker and the driver dead on the scene. And they are now trying to obtain dental reports to officially identified Walker and the driver. They say, it will be another 48 hours before they can perform an autopsy to officially declare what the exact cause was of death.

Now, according to our affiliates, the driver was Roger Rodas and he is the owner driver of always evolving performance cars. That is a business right in the area, Miguel. And from what we understand, just heartbreaking the driver's 8-year-old son responded to the crash nearby and tried in vain to save both his father and Walker.

MARQUEZ: Paul, do we know if this is an area where street racing regularly occurs. That area north of Los Angeles, I know there have been incidents in Santa Clarita before. But on this specific stretch, we also see in the footage of that a sign that says 45 miles per hour. They were clearly going faster than that.

But what can you tell us about this specific area?

VERCAMMEN: Well, we know that there is this business in the area that specializes in, you know, high performance cars. And that there are a lot of car enthusiasts who do for lack of a better term, hang out in this area. And you can see right there somebody was doing donuts or figure 8s. It is unknown if these donuts were related to the Walker crash.

We should say something about Paul Walker, too, quite an extensive passion for fast cars. He owned somewhere 20 to 30 cars at a time. His grandfather was a racer and many of his cars were also linked to his films. Amongst his favorites are R33 Nissan Skyline. He loved the Toyota supra. He was especially fond BMW light weights and those Porsches which, of course, he was riding in with his friend and colleague reportedly by all accounts, Mr. Rodas, according to affiliate of the driver who passed away in the crash, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: Very, very sad, and a bright, bright star leaving us too early.

Thank you very much, Paul Vercammen.

News from Washington is that the healthcare.gov Web site is working smoothly for the vast majority of users. The Obama administration says its self-imposed deadline to fix the problems, plaguing the sites as it was launch two months ago. Coming up in just a few minutes, we'll go to Washington for a live report.

And many stars and fans are mourning the death of actor Paul Walker. Coming up next, a closer look at the man and the movies that made him famous. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Actor Paul Walter killed overnight in a fiery car crash in Hollywood. And CNN has obtained footage of that inferno taken by witnesses, just moments after the crash occurred.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)

MARQUEZ: When deputies arrived at the scene, just north of Los Angeles, they found one vehicle fully engulfed in flames and Walker and the driver dead. Police say speed was a factor. CNN took these exclusive pictures of tire marks in a figure 8-pattern just feet from the crash. Police have yet to confirm if these tire marks were from this crash.

The 40-year-old star had been filming the latest installment of the movie series that made him a huge star, "Fast and Furious 7". His co- star Dwayne Rob Johnson tweeting this, "all my strength, love and faith to the Walker family during this heartbreaking time. We find our strength in his light. Love you, brother."

Tom O'Neil editor at goldenderby.com joins me from Los Angeles.

Tom, Walker leaves behind a 15-year-old daughter, incredibly said to think of, but what kind of guy was he? This is the guy who played an action figure, but who was he?

TOM O'NEIL, EDITOR, GOLDENDERBY.COM: He was renowned for just to be a great guy on the set for example. Everybody who made movies with him said he smiled a lot. His daughter was so close to him. She moved to California to be with him even though she wasn't initially raised with him.

But I think what really tells us everything about this guys is what he was doing just 30 minutes before he died. He was raising money charitable funds for the survivors of the typhoons in the Philippines. And in previous years, he had done disaster outreach to the victims in Chili and the victims in Haiti and victims of Katrina. He really cared.

MARQUEZ: Why? What was his interest in helping these international issues and did he do things in Los Angeles as well?

O'NEIL: Yes, he did. His charitable group, Reach Out Worldwide, was based here in Los Angeles. And I think when "Fast and the Furious" became such a huge hit internationally, he wanted to pay back because there was a lot of money at stake here, of course. And his financial adviser, by the way in all of this was the man who died with him, Roger Rodas.

MARQUEZ: Dear. I didn't realize that that was his financial adviser as well. I take it both these guys were clearly car aficionados. And the movie sort of marked him, "the Fast and Furious" franchise marked him as sort of this, you know, crazy out there sort of actor, but as you say, he was not. How did those films, though, go forward without him? I know they were right in the middle of filming "Fast and Furious 7" here in Atlanta.

O'NEIL: That is a bit of a mystery. We know that the production began in the end of September. We don't know how far along they are. But they are going to have several options. One is, for example, what happened in the movie "Gladiator" when Oliver Reed died a bit way through production. He played the runaway slave. They just digitally reproduce his face on another people's body. When (INAUDIBLE) during the filming of the imaginary (INAUDIBLE), because it was a corky fantasy, they were able to do outrageous things. Johnny Depp and his buddies Collin Farrow (ph), Andrew Law came in to played the part for him.

We don't know what they will do here or even if they will just say it may be tasteless to proceed at all because we can't be showing, you know, Paul Walker in the speeding car to find death in a movie that ended up the way he died.

MARQUEZ: Yes. That is going to be tough one. Very, very sad news out of L.A. today.

Tom O'Neil with goldenderby.com. Thank you very much.

President Obama promised the healthcare.gov site would work better by today. Did he deliver on that promise? We'll go live in Washington and tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: The White House says the nearly broken healthcare.gov Web site is in better shape today working properly, meaning that the administration's self-imposed deadline for key repairs to be made to it.

So, let's bring in Tory Dunnan who has been closely watching this sire development in the past 48 hours in our Washington NEWSROOM.

Tory, is the claims of administration stand up? Is it working?

TORY DUNNAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So Miguel, do you want the short answer or the long answer? I'll stick with the short answer.

MARQUEZ: You like short.

DUNNAN: Yes, we do. We are still watching it closely and the next week is definitely going to be key with all this. But important to point out, the administration does believe that they have met the goal of having a system that is going to be working smoothly for, they say, the vast majority of users. We have heard that time and time again, that promise. So, we will just see how it plays out as more people log on to the site in the coming days.

But first, I want to listen to what Jeff Zients, he is the man leading this, had to say in this morning's conference call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEFFREY ZIENTS, SPECIAL ADVISOR, HEALTHCARE.GOV: The bottom line healthcare.gov on December 1st is night and day from where it was on October 1st.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DUNNAN: So strong statement there. And on the same call, officials actually pointed to what they say is dramatic progress. It is being made on the site. The average response time for a page now take a fraction of a second. It is actually down from what they say is eight seconds. They also tell us they decreased the error rate from six percent to below one percent. And that now, 50,000 users should be able to get on the site at any given time. Of course, you know that is double what it was before. Important to remind people though, there are more users and the 50,000 at a certain time. People are going to be put in that virtual line. They will then receive that e-mail telling them of a better time to come back and try the system. Also, from the administration, they say that the site should now be able to support at least 800,000 consumers a day.

But Miguel, we are starting to get a little bit of reaction trickling in, mostly from Republicans in particular. And we heard from a spokesman for House speaker John Boehner that just of what he had to say is that this is not just about a Web site, but more about what they are calling a fundamentally flawed law.

And Miguel, one can assume, we will hear more of that in the next few days too as we watch the Web site pretty closely.

MARQUEZ: I bet we will. The one thing that they are not releasing, I think, they are going to be days ahead are the metrics, the information that would actually tell us how well it is working and where the errors are. I think we are going to see that very soon -- yes?

DUNNAN: You know, today, they did release a lot of those numbers in terms of charts and graphs as part of this conference call. But perhaps we might get more specifics in the days to come.

MARQUEZ: I'm sure there will be microscope, stethoscope, just about every sort of scope on this program as we move ahead.

DUNNAN: Whatever you want to look, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: Yes. Live in Washington. Thank you very much.

So how is the Web site doing technically? Let me bring in John Engates. He is the chief technology officer of Rackspace. It is the web site where you want to be at this. Is the Web site exactly where it wants to be at this point, John?

JOHN ENGATES, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICE, RACKSPACE: Yes, I think that they have certainly hit the goals that they laid out for themselves. You know, they basically told the public that they wanted to be able to hit the 50,000 users simultaneously mark. I think they hit that. Obviously, it remains to be seen whether everything is going to work perfectly because we have got sort of a ramp up effect going from here until the deadlines later this month. And I think we will see if it really match up with the need for the site and the performance that really has to --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- obviously, it remains to be seen whether everything is going to work perfectly because we've got sort of a ramp up effect going from here until the deadlines later this month and I think we'll see if it really matched up for the need for this site and performance that really has to live up to.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN ANCHOR: So there was a wrap of numbers that were released today. I don't how close you are watching all of this, but they give you a better sense, a more finite sense of how it is actually operating. Have you gone through those? Can you -- to what degree can you say that this thing is actually working and will continue to work in the days ahead?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the numbers are encouraging. The numbers that they have shared are multiple times better than they were in many cases, you know, that sometimes the -- things like up time have doubled. The performance is multiples of where it was in the database and other aspects of the website.

So it is encouraging to see that they have made dramatic changes to the site and hopefully that will hold up. But again, we don't know for sure at any given time next week or the following week, you could have more than 50,000 users. You could have hundreds of thousands of users potentially.

And so for those they are going to go into that cue or that waiting room as they might call to wait for a lower week period for their activity.

MARQUEZ: Am I right in saying that you consulted or assisted in this effort to some degree?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did not assist directly. We did get invited to the White House this last Monday to come and see the progress behind the scenes and take a look at what was going on in the operations center. (Inaudible) had no role in actually fixing the web site. It was more of just -- kind of a role of advising maybe at the last minute. So it really wasn't something we had a big change or a big impact on.

MARQUEZ: So with a scale - on a scale of one to ten with ten being the most and one being the least how much crisis with ten being the most was there at the White House and from what you saw?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, at the time that we saw it, they had high confidence and high moral and they were on the right track. I think they felt like they were, you know, sort of in the groove. In terms of where they were it is night and day.

MARQUEZ: All right, John, thank you very for joining us.

The investigation into a deadly train derailment in the Bronx is now in the hands of the NTSB. They are trying to figure out what happened. The latest on that investigation coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Now an NTSB team is on its way to the Bronx, New York to investigate a deadly train derailment. The NTSB will hold a briefing at the crash site at 4:30 p.m. We have just learned that. We will bring that briefing to you live.

Four people were killed when the seven-train cars flipped off the tracks. It happened just after 7:00 a.m. this morning near the Spuyten Divel Station in the Bronx. At least 67 people were hurt and rushed to several area hospitals. Fire officials said they had to rescue some people from under train cars. This comes at a terrible time, just a few days after Thanksgiving a busy, busy travel day.

Let's get to the investigation into this crash. Earlier I spoke with Debbie Hersman. She is the chairperson of the National Transportation Safety Board. I asked her about the state of the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH HERSMAN, CHAIRMAN, NTSB (via telephone): We have a go team that is in route to the accident scene. They left Washington late this morning and arrived in LaGuardia, and they will hit the ground running. They are experts in the work that they do. We got folks who are focusing on operation, tracks, human factors, crash worthiness and survivability, and recorders experts and they are all going to be looking to focus on those particular areas.

So for example, our recorder expert is going to look and see if we can identify any black box type recorders that might be on board the train. We will be looking at the signal system to see if there is any indication there that might tell us about what happened.

And of course, our operations team will be looking at the dispatchers, at the train operators and anyone who might have operated on these tracks immediately prior to this train coming through. So got a lot of work to do and we don't have day light hours, but we're going to do as much as we can certainly as we get on the scene to try to find out what happened so we can prevent this from happening again.

MARQUEZ: It sounds like a lot of work for you guys in the days ahead. Can you say this is a push-pull train that were seven cars plus an engine so eight cars total, can you say -- the engine was as the rear of the train, can anything about the safeness or the ability of this sort of configuration of train to go around a curve that sharp?

HERSMAN: You know, certainly will be looking at what was expected in this situation and if the expectations were actually met. So we have a lot to do before we can reach between conclusions. We have to gather some facts. Our teams have to get on the scene and we have to understand what the environment is and what the equipment was doing and also how it was being operated.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Many people on that train said it may have been going faster than normal. Witnesses of the crash also captured the accident scene on their phones. We'll show those images coming up.

But first, one person can make a difference. It's a sentiment that might sound like a cliche, but tonight we are celebrating ten remarkable individuals who prove how true it is at the seventh annual "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute."

One of those being honored is Chad Pregracke growing up in the Mississippi River. He was appalled by the trash in the legendary waterways so he started cleaning up by himself. Now thousands joined his crusade every year.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAD PREGRACKE, DEFENDING THE PLANET: The Mississippi River is one of the most famous rivers in the world. Historically help build the country, 18 million people get their daily drinking water from it. This is a huge migratory water way for all the birds. It's almost like a huge national park.

I grew up right on the river and almost took it for granted. Everything you can imagine winds up in the river somehow. Refrigerators, stoves, tires, trucks, we are talking millions of pounds of garbage.

As I got older, I realized it should not be like this. And if no one going to do anything about it, I will. The first year, it's just myself, a boat, a river and a lot of trash. Pumped up to do it and now, here we are 15 ships later, it went from boat loads to barge loads.

You guys ready? We are basically creating an opportunity for people to go out on the river and do something positive. We are basically creating an opportunity for people to go out in the river and do something positive.

We gather up all these volunteers. We go out there and we just sweep it clean. This is hard, back-breaking work. We want to make it fun out there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't think I would be seeing here on the boat.

PREGRACKE: At the end of the day you are picking up garbage. Little by little we are getting it. People want to have fun and people want to make a difference. We've removed over 7 million pounds of garbage since we started. Close to 90 percent of everything brought in is recycled. This is a problem that people created, but a problem that people can fix. It's about making America a better place. It sounds cliche, but that is exactly what we are doing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Wow, Mark Twain would be proud of him. And this year on "CNN Heroes," a first, don't miss the incredible act of generosity from the CNN Hero of the Year that brought the audience to its feet. "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" is tonight at 8:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Now we continue our live coverage of the train derailment in New York. Here's what we know. A passenger train derailed just after sun up in the Bronx. Seven cars went off the track, some flipped over killing at least four people and at least 67 other people were injured, 11 of them seriously. The National Transportation Safety Board will hold its first briefing on the accident at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. We will bring that to you.

Nick Valencia joins us here now. He's been keeping tabs on what's happening in the social media world and the pictures, the amount of information we are seeing out there. What are you finding?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, some of the first images of this derailment surfaced on social media. We've been scouring social media since we heard reports initially of this train derailment. I want to share with you some of those that we obtained.

We'll start with Daniel Cohen. He gives a very eerie perspective here. That is coming to us on Instagram. It shows an unsettling -- you could sort of see, Miguel, the scale of the crash. You have that car flipped over on its side. We were talking to one woman that was in a car that was flipped over earlier.

Terry Tines posted a photo of Coast Guard boats in the water, if we can switch to that photo there. Initially as we mentioned and initially been reported, there was believe that one of those cars of the train that made it into the Hudson River. We know that's not accurate as well, a Coast Guard searching and making sure that there was no one in that water.

Three people were ejected not into the water, but they were ejected and they suffered from -- fatalities from their injuries. Another tweet here coming to us from Rebecca Schwartz, she was one of the first people to send an image to CNN. She said she didn't see the crash itself. She said it was right across the river and the moment she saw that scene she said it was something really big and really bad.

MARQUEZ: I'm sure it was. A lot of the folks that I've either heard from or read about or seen online talk about the noise and the concern about the second crash that happened or this accident, the derailment six months ago in July. What are you hearing on that score? VALENCIA: We don't know just yet. That is part of the NTSB's investigation. We had the chairwoman on earlier, Deborah Hersman. A big factor of this investigation, of course, is going to be the event box recorder, similar to a black box on a plane. They are going to be looking into that and seeing exactly when the train stopped and if speed was a factor. And of course, we've been hearing -

MARQUEZ: Many people saying that speed is a factor. All right, thank you very much, Nick.

Now, just ahead on the train that shows us what it was like when her car went off the tracks, an incredible survivor story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: In men's wheelchair tennis this 29 year-old is the one to beat. Shingo fell in love with the game after treatment for spinal cancer left him paralyzed at an early age.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My mother liked tennis. She recommended for me. I play tennis. My footwork is especially good than the other players. I think I have talent for pushing.

ANNOUNCER: With another successful season under his belt, the athlete hopes to inspire another generation of players who find the sport just as challenging and rewarding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Back now to our continuing live coverage of the train derailment in Bronx, New York. It happened just after 7:00 a.m. this morning. Four people killed and 67 injured. A short time ago, I spoke to a passenger, a survivor who was on the train the moment it went off the tracks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA SWANSON, TRAIN PASSENGER (via telephone): I was on my way to work in Manhattan. I kind of woke up when I felt my body was at a 65 degree angle. When I opened my eyes it was clear I didn't have headphones in so the screeching hadn't quite registered. When I realized what was going on I was very much awake.

My first reaction was to grab my phone in that moment I had every intension of walking away from the accident. As the train started to move further, once it had hit the ground on the side the windows had blown out on its side in every possible direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: Amazing and she walked away perfectly fine. Coming up next, one woman's amazing story of her near death experience, hear what she said happened as she laid dying of cancer in the ICU. Her riveting account coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MARQUEZ: Well, certainly everyone has their own vision of heaven over my shoulder here. Tonight, Anderson Cooper has the stories of those who say they have seen it. A woman in the final troves of stage 4 lymphoma comatose she said she was given the chance to return to the living or die. Her dramatic story is one of three told in the "AC Special Report: To Heaven and Back." Our Randy Kaye has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: You could still see your husband. How was he reacting to the fact that you were in this coma and he thought he was losing you?

ANITA MOORJANI: He was very distraught. He was there by my bedside. He was holding my hand, and I could feel he was willing me to come back.

KAYE: And you had a choice to make.

MOORJANI: I had a choice as to whether to come back or not. At first, I absolutely did not want to come back because why would I want to come back into this sick and dying body? But then it was as though in the next moment I understood why I had the cancer. All the years of beating myself up, feeling flawed, had turned my own energy against me and manifested as cancer.

KAYE: Fear in a way poisoned your body.

MOORJANI: Yes, it did. And I understood that now that I knew this, my body would heal.

KAYE: You had this huge revelation. And Sony and your father both affirmed what needed to be done.

MOORJANI: Both of them said to me, go back and live your life fearlessly. And it was around that time that I started to come back.

KAYE: So how long were you in the coma?

MOORJANI: About 30 hours. I was in the intensive care unit, but within four days, they were able to take off the oxygen. They were able to take out the food tube and the tumor shrunk by 70 percent.

KAYE: And the doctors, they kept testing you, right? They kept looking for cancer. They kept treating you.

MOORJANI: They were saying, there's no way that cancer disappears like that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: "To Heaven And Back," an Anderson Cooper's special report airs tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.