tags: Train Incidents, Expensive Car Incidents NY, suicide
6 killed February 3, 2015 NY Commuter Train Hits Mercedes SUV Stuck at Crossing A collision between a commuter train and a Mercedes SUV stopped at a crossing kills six in Valhalla, New York. Woman driver who was killed stopped after gate hit back of her truck, she looked, got back in, then was hit by train. Third rail pierced car, killing passengers, truck gas tank exploded into flames. She mother of 3 was employee at jewelry store with $48,000 Mercedes ML 350 SUV. Investigators were focused on odd behavior of the driver.
No one even speculates on possibility of suicide.
Similar cases:
September 18, 2013 Train Hits Canada Bus Crashing Through Crossing Barrier Six are killed when a double-decker transit bus in Ottawa blasted through the crossing gates to hit a passing passenger train. The driver was killed as the nose of the bus was ripped off and derailed the train. 30 were injured, 11 critically, there were no injuries on the train. Bus passengers screamed at the driver who did not slow down and appeared to be intent on driving into the train, they wondered if he had passed out or did not see the train or the closed gates. The bus operator said that the cause of the crash was not clear. The SUV driver was Ellen Schaeffer Brody, 49, of Edgemont, driver of the SUV, and a bookkeeper and sales associate at a Chappaqua jewelry store. How could she afford a $45,000 nearly new Mercedes SUV?
*Reference
Wikipedia Valhalla train crash
Valhalla train crash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Valhalla train crash | |
|---|---|
 NTSB investigators survey the vehicles involved in the accident | |
| Details | |
| Date | February 3, 2015 |
| Time | 6:30 p.m. EST (23:30 UTC) |
| Location | Valhalla, New York |
| Coordinates | 41.08628°N 73.78804°WCoordinates: 41.08628°N 73.78804°W |
| Country | United States |
| Rail line | Harlem Line |
| Operator | Metro North Railroad |
| Type of incident | Grade crossing |
| Cause | Under investigation |
| Statistics | |
| Trains | 1 |
| Passengers | At least 650 |
| Deaths | 6 |
| Injuries | 15 reported (7 seriously) |
| Damage | 1 train car 1 automobile |
On the evening of February 3, 2015, a commuter train on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Linestruck a passenger car at a grade crossing near Valhalla, New York, United States, between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations, killing six people and injuring fifteen others, including seven in "very serious condition".[1][2]
An accident earlier on the day on the Taconic State Parkway, which parallels that section of track, had led to the road's closure in one direction. Traffic sought alternate routes, one of which went through the grade crossing. The driver of an SUV who was caught inside thecrossing gate when it descended, wedging itself into the rear of her vehicle, apparently attempted to rectify the situation by crossing the tracks instead of backing up. She died when her vehicle was struck by the train, along with five passengers on the train. The impact tore loose more than 450 feet (140 m) of third rail; after piercing her car, it went into the front of the train, broken into sections.
It was the deadliest passenger train crash in the United States since the 2009 Washington Metro train collision, which killed nine people and injured eighty others.[3] It is also the deadliest crash in Metro-North's history[2] and is only the second Metro-North train incident to result in passenger fatalities, after the derailment 14 months earlier on the railroad's Hudson Line that killed four people.[4] It is not the first fatal incident at that crossing; a similar crash there in 1984 killed the driver of the van involved[5] and gates had been installed subsequently.[6]
Since grade-crossing accidents typically do not lead to fatalities on board the train, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board are particularly interested in determining why the fatalities occurred. They believe that fuel from the SUV may have combined with sparks from the dislodged third rail to cause a fire on board the train. They are interested in finding out how the SUV driver got into the position she did in the first place; the detour caused by the earlier road accident may also have played a role.
Contents
[hide]Background[edit]
At about 5:30 p.m., shortly before sunset on February 3, 2015, a vehicle traveling south along theTaconic State Parkway north of the hamlet of Valhalla in the town of Mount Pleasant, in centralWestchester County north of New York City, struck another vehicle making a turn onto Lakeview Avenue from the northbound parkway. Responding emergency services closed both lanes of the southbound Taconic and one northbound lane. Drivers heading both directions left the parkway, seeking alternate routes back to it on local surface roads.[7]
At 5:44 p.m., the No. 659 train of Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, which provides commuter railservice over an 82-mile (132 km) route from New York City to Wassaic in northeastern Dutchess County, departed Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, 26 miles (42 km) south of Valhalla. It was an express train of eight carriages,[8] formed by four Bombardier M7A electric multiple units, bound for Southeast in Putnam County,[a] with Chappaqua its first scheduled stop.[9][10] At the controls was Stephen Smalls, a 32-year-old resident of Orange County and three-year Metro-North employee. He had been an engineer for nine months.[11]
The part of the parkway in Valhalla remained closed. One detour available to northbound traffic involved using Lakeview Avenue and turning at the large Kensico Cemetery, a short distance to the west. Lakeview Avenue crossed the two tracks using a grade crossing. The next such crossing was Commerce Street, a lightly traveled local road to the north that intersects the tracks diagonally. It continues northwest through the cemetery for a quarter-mile (400 m), then turns north again down a slight rise back over another grade crossing to asignalized intersection with the parkway.[7]
Accident[edit]
The parkway was still closed around 6:30 p.m., when a Mercedes-Benz ML350 SUV driven by Ellen Schaeffer Brody, 49, of Edgemont, went north on Commerce back towards the parkway.[12][13] Brody left work in Chappaqua at 6 p.m. and was going to meet a friend inScarsdale.[14] Behind her was a vehicle driven by Rick Hope of Yorktown Heights, returning home from his job in White Plains.[2][15]
At the grade crossing, the 659 train was approaching on the western track. The crossing gates descended, warning lights began flashing and bells rang. Hope says Brody's SUV was in front of the gate as it descended, but not on the tracks. Had she simply remained where she was, he speculated, the passing train would have at most struck a glancing blow, perhaps damaging only the SUV's front bumper.[15]
The crossing gate struck the top of Brody's SUV before sliding down its rear and becoming stuck. Hope backed up to give her room to do the same. He instead saw Brody get out and walk to the rear, apparently trying to free it. "What struck me was how calm she was—she didn't seem to be panicking, or in a hurry at all, even though the gate was down," he said later. "She wasn't in a hurry at all, but she had to have known that a train was coming."[15] Brody looked at him, and he motioned to her to come back in his direction, although he allows that she may not have seen him due to the glare from his headlights. Brody then returned to her vehicle and, according to Hope, seemed to pause as if she was adjusting her seat belt. The train was getting closer and the situation more urgent. "The thing's dinging, red lights are flashing, it's going off," he said. "I just knew she was going to back up—never in my wildest dreams did I think she'd go forward."[2]
Instead, Brody did move forward, roughly 30 seconds after the gate came down on her car, investigators determined later.[16] The train, traveling at 58 miles per hour (93 km/h), struck the SUV on its passenger side. "There was a terrible crunching sound, and just like that, the car was gone," Hope said. "Disappeared. It happened instantly. There's no way she could have known what hit her."[15]
In the train's front car, Chris Gross was suddenly thrown out of his seat. "I heard a loud bang and a lot of screaming," he recalled. Flames were within a foot of his face; another passenger got the emergency exit open and pulled him out. The five passengers who died were all sitting near him, he claimed. Jamie Wallace, in the second car, said that passengers there initially tried to come to the aid of those in the front car, but "we could not get the head car doors open for some reason, it was jammed." After failed efforts to break the door open, "[a] number of us started smelling fumes from the car, the fuel, and we said, 'You know what, we need to get out.'"[17]
Smalls applied the emergency brakes as soon as he saw the vehicle. After the crash, he went back into the burning train several times to rescue passengers. "He did everything he could," said Anthony Bottalico, head of Association of Commuter Rail Employees, the labor union which represents Metro-North workers. Despite that, the train knocked Brody's SUV 1,000 feet (300 m) up the tracks, which dislodged more than 450 feet (140 m) of the third rail,[18] breaking it into 80-foot (24 m) segments, most of which accumulated in the front car's passenger compartment, and then into the second car.[2] The New York Daily News reported that injuries from them were responsible for most of the deaths on the train.[19]
Passengers further back in the train heard explosions. "The thing that precipitated people really starting to freak out and break the glass and open the door was there was a loud 'bam,' explosion-type thing," said Fred Buonocore, who was in the fourth car. "And once we jumped off the side, there was another explosion to a lesser degree." At the very rear, passengers said they felt only a small jolt. "It felt not even like a short stop, and then the train just completely stopped," said Neil Rader, who was sitting in the middle-back of the train.[17][20]
Aftermath[edit]
Brody died, as did five passengers aboard the train.[20][21] The lead car caught fire[20] and was eventually destroyed.[12] Passengers who escaped or were evacuated and were not injured were taken to a nearby climbing gym, where they were able to stay warm until buses arrived.[17] Nine passengers were taken to Westchester Medical Center, with one of them in very serious condition.[22] A police helicopter with thermal imaging equipment scanned the cemetery in search of survivors who might have wandered away from the scene and collapsed into the snow, but found none.[23]
A curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and three finance executives were among the other victims, who were all identified on February 4. There were a total of six deaths and fifteen injuries.[24]
Shortly after and as a result of the crash, Harlem Line service was suspended betweenPleasantville and North White Plains.[25][26] On the afternoon of February 4, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) gave permission for Metro-North crews to clear the site. Overnight on February 4, a 100-member crew cleared the vehicles, using a high-railcrane to remove the SUV. The train's locomotive was towed to Metro-North's North White Plains yard, and then workers proceeded to repair the 450 feet of third rail. Metro-North service resumed on the morning of February 5, with delays of fifteen minutes for trains to slow down as they pass the site of the accident.[27] Commerce Street reopened to car traffic on the afternoon of February 5.[28]
Fatalities[edit]
All but one of the victims were Westchester residents. All the train passengers killed worked in Manhattan; three of them in finance, and two of them at the same firm.
- Ellen Schaeffer Brody, 49, of Edgemont, driver of the SUV, and a bookkeeper and sales associate at a Chappaqua jewelry store.[29]
- Robert Dirks, 38, of Chappaqua, a computational chemist at D.E. Shaw Research in Manhattan.[30][31]
- Walter Liedtke, 69, of Bedford Hills, curator of European art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of a two-volume guide to theDutch paintings in the museum's collection.[32]
- Joseph Nadol, 42, of Ossining, an aerospace and defense equity analyst at JP Morgan Chase.[33]
- Aditya Tomar, 41, of Danbury, Connecticut, vice president for technology supporting the JP Morgan Chase asset managementteam.[34]
- Eric Vandercar, 53, of Bedford Hills, senior managing director of international sales and trading at the New York office of Mesirow Financial.[35]
Investigation[edit]
On the night of the accident, the NTSB opened an investigation into the accident, and dispatched a go-team to the site.[36] They plan to stay for a week, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses.[37]
Investigators said they were particularly interested in one of the crash's unusual aspects. "We do have grade-crossing accidents, and most of the time it's fatal for occupants of the vehicles, and not for train passengers," Robert Sumwalt of the NTSB told The Journal News, Westchester County's main daily newspaper. "We intend to find out what makes this accident different."[37]
They theorized that the fire aboard the train might have been caused by gasoline from the SUV, ignited by a spark from the third rail and the force of impact. However, "the big question everyone wants to know is: Why was this vehicle in the crossing?" Sumwalt said. The NTSB team believed the crossing was functioning properly, but was aware also that the earlier accident on the Taconic had led to more traffic through it. "We want to understand what, if any, effect that detour had in setting up this accident."[37]
Some area residents suggested the crossing itself was the problem. Lance Sexton, a Manhattan resident who commutes to the area to assemble electronic equipment, described using it to The New York Times: "[C]oming down the hill of the cemetery, you have to put the brakes on earlier ... There's a bank there that always collects water, making it even more dangerous." He also said he and his coworkers often complained about how quickly the train came after the gates went down, gates which had been installed after a 1984 crash killed a van driver. "How safe is that crossing—for this to happen again?" that victim's sister asked the newspaper.[38]
Three days later, the NTSB investigators announced that all safety features at the crossing—the gate, the train's horn, and a sign 65 feet (20 m) away warning drivers not to stop on the tracks—were in good working order and had functioned properly at the time of the accident. The gates had gone down 39 seconds before the train reached the crossing, they said, meaning Brody had spent almost that amount of time inside them. They would next focus on whether she was familiar with the road and whether she was using a phone at the time.[16]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ The line, from Grand Central Terminal to Southeast Station, is electrified by third rail. Electrification ends at that station; only diesel trains can continue on the Harlem Line to Wassaic.
*Sources
(MSN), (CBS Local) A 400-foot section of the electrified third rail, broken into five 80-foot pieces, gashed through the Mercedes-Benz SUV driven by Ellen Brody before piercing the floor of the first car of the train. A source indicated some of the dead passengers were sliced when the rail tore through the floor “like it was cutting through butter. . Brody, 49, a married mother of three, was headed home from work at a Chappaqua jewelry design shop, The rear of her car was struck by a gate at the intersection she casually stepped outside to check for damage, a source said but was hit by the approaching train with her car. 6 killed February 3, 2015 After Deadly Metro-North Accident Train Hits Stuck SUV, Investigation Is Underway New York Times FEB. 4, 2015 A crowded commuter train traveling north through Westchester County slammed into the S.U.V. on Tuesday night, setting off a devastating explosion and fire that killed six people. Fifteen people were being treated at local hospitals, state officials said. Revised figures six people had died — five train passengers and the driver of the car, according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. there was significant traffic near the railroad crossing where the accident happened and that it did not seem that the woman driving the vehicle, a black Jeep Cherokee, was trying to beat the train at the crossing at Lakeview Avenue in Valhalla, N.Y. “It looks like where she stopped she did not want to go on the tracks, but the proximity of the gate to her car, you know, it was dark — maybe she didn’t know she was in front of the gate,” He said that the woman instead drove forward, only to find herself stuck on the tracks... one person briefed on the matter said that it appeared that the woman was outside her car frantically waving at the train to stop at the time of crash
Behavior of SUV driver in deadly New York commuter train crash under scrutiny fox
Published February 05, 2015 A Metro-North train hit a truck, killing its driver, at the same Commerce Street crossing in 1984, according to Federal Railroad Administration records.
Five men on the train, as well as the SUV's driver, were killed late Tuesday in the deadliest accident in the 32-year history of the Metro-North commuter rail. The train smashed into the Mercedes ML350 driven by jewelry store employee Ellen Brody, Price for ML350 is $48,000
No comments:
Post a Comment