Authorities rush to aid the dead and injured on Sunday. The yellow blankets covered the deceased and the white sheets protect the living injured.
Four people died Sunday morning when several Metro North cars derailed in the Bronx, creating a terrifying tangle of steel that sent passengers flying.
Two of the passengers were killed when they were ejected from the Metro-North train around 7:20 a.m. near the Spuyten Duyvil Station, sources told The News.
Rescue workers at the scene helping those injured in the Metro-North train derailment near Spuyten Duyvil.
As Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the FBI surveyed the scene, survivor Dianna Jackson, 40, of Poughkeepsie, sported spidery streams of dried blood on her face after the accident. She was in the third car, which overturned.
"We're banged up," she told the Daily News. "We left the Tarrytown stop, the next stop was 125 St. The driver was going around the curve really fast. Next thing you know (we're) in middle of a wreckage."
A car from the derailed train sits dangerously close to the Hudson River.
"I was sitting in the first seat in the front of the car facing backwards," Jackson said. "I was flung six feet. I landed on the shattered window (on the side of the train that hit the ground). I was lying on my back, gravel was flying everywhere. I was dragging along the ground. ... Maybe it was a minute, it felt like an eternity, I just wanted it to stop. ... I had gravel in my teeth, I was eating rocks. But I was grateful to be eating rocks because I'm still alive."
Afterward, there was chaos inside the train cars.
Injured train passengers were rushed to local hospitals on Sunday.
"My face scraped on the side of the train," said Kathleen Jones, 60, a nurses’ aid heading to work from Poughkeepsie. "We were going so fast around that turn, something wasn't right. All the sudden everyone went flying. We were dragging on the ground, people were landing on each other. Then there was dirt everywhere."
A aerial view of a Metro-North train that derailed near the near the Spuyten Duyvil Station in the Bronx, killeing at least four people.
"I saw one lady that looked like her neck was stuck in the window," Jones said. "I don't ever want to take the train again."
In all, there were more than 100 people on board and up to 63 people were injured. At least a dozen are listed in critical condition.
Passengers have reported taking a curve fast before the train derailed on Sunday morning.
The train engineer says he applied brakes but they didn't respond, sources told The News. As a result, five of the seven train cars went soaring off the tracks, MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said.
The 5:54 a.m. train was coming from Poughkeepsie and headed to Manhattan's Grand Central Station. It was slated to arrive at 7:43 a.m.
BARRY WILLIAMS FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Rescue workers rushed to the Metro-North train derailment on Sunday just outside of the Spuyten Duyvil Station.
By mid-morning, cadaver dogs, scuba divers and helicopter crews were looking for other bodies that might have been ejected.
The dead were not yet identified but the mourning already began. "They are in our thoughts and our prayers," Cuomo said.
A aerial view of the Metro-North train derailment shows its location in the Bronx and its proximity to the city.
Witnesses, including Ellen Stevenson, 57, rushed to the scene. She thought her daughter was on board.
Dozens were reported injured in the accident.
"My daughter wasn't on that train, thank God," Stevenson said. "I heard a loud screeching, like a loud grind. Something wasn't right. It was going too fast. Two officers were holding another officer up the hill. He was limping. He needed help. They were putting another woman on a stretcher. There was blood on the sheet but she was conscious and moving. It was going fast. It disconnected past the curve. I take this train every day. Usually they slow down here."
Hudson line service between Grand Central Terminal and Croton Harmon has been suspended indefinitely.
A bloodied, unnamed passenger stands on the tracks after the Metro North-Hudson Line train crash in the Bronx Sunday morning.
The area was the site of another train derailment last summer. A freight train full of trash went off the rails at 8:30 p.m. on July 18 when ten of the train’s 24 cars derailed between the Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale stations in the Bronx. The train was carrying garbage from the city. No one was hurt in the derailment but it disrupted the Metro North Hudson Line the following day.
Other survivors and witnesses described the crash. Here’s a look at what they told The News:
A Metro-North passenger train derailed Sunday morning as holiday travelers made their way home from Thanksgiving celebrations.
• Dennis O'Neill, 56, was on his way to the Javits center from Tarrytown. He was in the second car and saw people being taken away from the second car on stretchers.
"The train was going very fast. As you went around the curve you could feel the train going on its side," O'Neill said. "You saw one track going straight, we were on a turning track I think and just started falling away."
The train was heading to Manhattan when it derailed Sunday morning, injuring dozens and killing four.
"It was dark, but you could see people were asking everyone if they were OK ... it was smoky, the entire thing was filled with dust ... it was awful, we're lucky to be alive," O'Neill said
A locator map shows the Spuyten Duyvil Metro-North Railroad Station.
"All of the sudden we were just on our side. And there was a crash and dragging. A lot of people got cut by glass from the windows," he continued. "The firefighters helped us out through the top, obviously they helped the people who were the worst off first. We had to climb on the seats and railings to get out.”
• Joseph Melendez, 44, hotel manager going to work, from Poughkeepsie, was in third car, which overturned and separated from fourth car when it fell.
An overhead view of the Metro-North Train derailment that occurred Sunday.
"All the sudden the woman sitting in front of me was on my lap,” Melendez said. “The train was totally on its side. People were tossed all around.”
"I saw a woman pinned between the chair and the gravel,” Melendez said, noting military vets who jumped into action. “The windows blew out when the train fell and she went through the window. She was alive I think, but in bad condition.”
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Gov. Cuomo arrives at the scene of the train derailment.
• Steven Chiccoree, 30, heading home to Long Island from her grandparents’ home in Wappingers Falls and was in the second car.
"I thought we were going to die," Chiccoree said. "I didn't know if we were on a bridge or over the water. I didn't know if we were falling off of something. I thought we were going to die."
Firefighters help a woman who in a sling who was injured in the Metro-North train derailment Spuyten Duyvil.
• Kathy Sampey, who has lived in the areas for 15 years, said people were getting out of the train through the windows.
A rescue worker stands atop one of the five cars that came off the track, this one having fallen on its side.
"The police and emergency crews were trying to pull people out. It had to be going fast. It's surreal to see this."
• “I was at my desk at my computer and I thought a plane was coming in,” Steve Kronenberg, who lives nearby, told 1010 WINS. “I jumped away. Then after the noise stopped, I looked out the window and saw the train derailment, and I called 911 right away. They put me on with the fire department. I told them what had happened, where it was, so on and so forth. … I told them there wasn’t any flames. There was a little bit of smoke coming out from one of the cars and they got here pretty quickly.”
Dozens were injured Sunday after a Metro-North train derailed near the Hudson River in the Bronx.
• Joel Zaritsky was on his way to New York City for a dental convention, he told The Associated Press.
"I was asleep and I woke up when the car started rolling several times. Then I saw the gravel coming at me and I heard people screaming. There was smoke everywhere and debris. People were thrown to the other side of the train," he said, holding his bloody right hand.
Rescue workers treat passengers injured in the Metro-North Hudson River line derailment that occurred on Sunday morning.
• The loud boom woke Felix Lam, 73.
"I hear like a loud sound. I run down," said Lam, who lives in an 8th floor apartment that faces the crash. "I called 911. My wife kept saying the 'the train derailed.' I went down. People started coming out of the train. They had broken arms and blood on their heads. The emergency crews were helping get people out of the train. They had head injuries. I spoke to some people who said they had been sleeping and woke up to the crash. Everybody was laying on the floor. They didn't have enough ambulances."
Dianna Jackson, right, comforts fellow Metro North survivor Katrina Frazier.
A family center has been set up at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx. Family can call (718) 817-7444 or (212) 639-9675 for info on the status of relatives.
Rescue workers pull victims out of a Metro-North train derailment south of the Spuyten Duyvil station Sunday.
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