Several dead after passenger train derails in crash with dump truck
Multiple people are dead after a train struck a dump truck at a public crossing in Missouri on Monday afternoon.
The incident happened at 1:42 p.m. on Monday, June 27th near Mendon, Missouri.
According to SF Gate, the dump truck was hauling some sort of rocks at the time of the crash, which derailed eight train cars and locomotives. The truck driver died in the crash, along with two train passengers. There were approximately 243 passengers and 12 crew members on board the train. More than 40 patients were transported to nearby hospitals for treatment.
“All of a sudden the car that we were on was over and everyone was flying everywhere. Seats were coming apart. Bags were going everywhere. And then, after it stopped, you could smell the fumes and so people started panicking, thinking it was going to catch fire so we tried to get out as quick as possible,” said Amtrak passenger Jason Drinkard, who boarded the train at Kansas City’s Union Station.
“It all happened like slow motion. It started to rock and, and rock, and then flicker, and then it just all of a sudden — all this dust was through my window,” said Robert Nightingale, a passenger who was taking a nap in a sleeper car at the time of the incident. He said that he had to crawl through his overturned car, through the hallway, and then into another room with an unblocked window to escape the train.
The train I was traveling on derailed on the way to Iowa near Mendon Missouri pic.twitter.com/YndSEEXkto
— Dax McDonald (@cloudmarooned) June 27, 2022
“It hit something major to cause … every car to go off,” he said.
Two Boy Scout troops returning from the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico were on board the wrecked train, and the scouts were able to render aid to the truck driver just before he passed.
“In true scouting fashion, the scouts rendered aid to their fellow passengers before they worried about anything for themselves,” said Scott Armstrong, director of National Media Relations for Boy Scouts of America.
“It was one of our scouts who actually discovered the driver of the dump truck who struck, located him in the vicinity of the impact and rendered aid and comfort until the driver passed away,” Armstrong continued.
This train crash was the second in two days involving an Amtrak train and a passenger vehicle. 85 passengers were on board a train that struck a vehicle in rural California on Sunday. Three people were killed in that crash and two were seriously injured – all people inside of the passenger vehicle.
No further information on Monday’s wreck has been released.