NEWTON, Mass. -- A member of the National Transportation Safety Board and a team of federal investigators arrived Thursday to seek the cause of a collision between two commuter trains that killed one of the operators and injured more than a dozen passengers.
Board member Kathryn "Kitty" Higgins and rail investigator Wayne Workman were leading the effort to find the cause of Wednesday's crash, which killed 24-year-old Terrese Edmonds near a station in suburban Newton. The young driver had worked for the authority only since last August.
An initial NTSB briefing was scheduled for midday Thursday, board spokesman Peter Knudson said. Among the possible causes routinely investigated by the board are equipment failure, operator error and systems malfunction. A full report is not expected for up to 18 months, Knudson said.
The two-car train Edmonds was operating rammed the back of another two-car train about 6 p.m. as it approached Woodland Station on the outbound track of the T's Green Line "D" branch, said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The trains carried about 200 passengers combined.
"The first one was stopped at a red signal and was ready to proceed to the station when it was struck," he said.
The train that was rammed was later removed from the scene, but the one that caused the collision remained so it could be examined, according to Pesaturo. Passengers were bused around the site on Thursday.
More than one-third of the roof was bent downward over the cab where Edmonds had been working. For roughly seven hours, firefighters struggled frantically to free her from the mangled wreckage. Her body was extricated early Thursday morning.
One passenger was flown to Boston Medical Center and remained hospitalized Thursday, Pesaturo said. Nine others were treated at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and about five were treated at the scene, he said.
Massachusetts transit officials interviewed the surviving three operators, Pesaturo said. Each train carried two.
Passenger Barry Gallup, standing aboard the train that was hit, said the impact threw him to the floor.
"I may have been knocked out for a few seconds. ... The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground," Gallup said.
He described a confused scene, with some passengers screaming and small fires breaking out on the side of the train. Other passengers concurred about the chaos.
"There was a 70-year-old old guy who went ballistic, screaming at the conductor, 'You killed my wife! You killed my wife!' And the wife is going, 'I'm OK! I'm OK,"' passenger Matt Stone, 46, told The Boston Globe.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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