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American Morning

NTSB Investigates Amtrak Accident

Aired July 30, 2002 - 09:02   ET

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

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Here in the U.S., federal investigators trying to learn why an Amtrak passenger train from Chicago bound for Washington ran off the rails yesterday approaching the nation's capital. More than 100 passengers injured, 6 of them critically.
Kathleen Koch at the scene of the crash in Kensington, Maryland, again, just north of D.C.

Kathleen, good morning.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

Well NTSB investigators have taken a preliminary look at the event recorders, essentially the train's block boxes. And they found that the capital limited was running at about 60 miles an hour when the derailment occurred. The speed limit here was 70 miles per hour so that's within the normal parameters.

Now the engineer was braking, according to the event recorders. Now sources say he has told investigators that as he approached this section of track he saw that it had heaved to the side so that was why he applied the brakes. Now there was some concern about the intense heat yesterday. It was about 96 degrees with a heat index pushing it well over 100. So there's a fear that that may have buckled the section of track.

Now CSX owns and maintains these tracks. They had checked that very section on Sunday and found no problems whatsoever. Also, just 45 minutes before the capital limited passed over this section of track a freight rail had just gone over it -- a freight train. So NTSB investigators will be -- will be interviewing that engineer as well as the 12 crew members on board the capital limited. They'll also be talking to some of the 161 passengers aboard.

Now, obviously, it's a complete miracle that no one was -- well we have some six people critically injured but no one died in this accident. There were some 200 rescuers who responded to this, Bill, because this accident occurred very close, just three miles north of where another accident occurred back in 1996 that claimed 11 lives. So there was a very prompt response and that may have been part of what led to no fatalities here.

Back to you.

HEMMER: Amazing story.

Kathleen Koch, thanks, working that story, again, north of the nation's capital.

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