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Wreck a 'terrifying' ordeal
By KATHRYN WEXLER, Times Staff Writer PALATKA -- When the violent shaking began, Thomas McGarry was plodding back to his seat on Amtrak's Auto Train, a bottle of water in one hand and bags of pretzels in the other.
His legs went limp. His weak heart throbbed faster, his breath knocked right out of him. The train car skidded to the left and tore away from the tracks. The screeching of metal grinding metal mingled with screams. The Auto Train was hurtling off the tracks in a derailment Thursday that killed four people and injured more than 150. The engineer told investigators he threw on the emergency brakes just before the train derailed because he saw misaligned tracks ahead. Investigators were still trying to confirm whether the track was misaligned, said George Black of the National Transportation Safety Board. Authorities were focusing on the possibility that a "sun kink," a buckle in the tracks caused by heat, caused the crash, they said. The train was going 56 mph in a 60 mph zone. Moments before the crash, it was business as usual aboard one of Amtrak's most popular trains, filled with tourists returning from vacation and retirees heading north after wintering in Florida. In the dining car, Judy Oliver was making her way to a table when the compartment lurched forward and back, over and over. It smashed onto its side. Oliver, 55, was flung onto a counter and bruised all over. Another woman was stuck beneath a table. Karen Charpentier and her two daughters, 5 and 8, were bounding through an aisle after a week of visiting friends in Lady Lake when the train, 40 cars long, came to a crashing stop. She looked up in time to see her children tossed around. Charpentier was thrown harder. Bruises on one leg were so severe that she would need a cast. But once the train stopped, she put on a happy face to soothe the girls, who turned out to be fine. "It was terrifying," said Charpentier, a part-time tax accountant in Trumbull, Conn. "But when you're with your kids, you don't want to show it." Still, the impact was only the beginning of the ordeal for the 468 passengers, most of them senior citizens bound from Sanford to Northern Virginia. Some were trapped inside the overturned train for an hour or more as firefighters broke windows and dropped ladders to rescue victims. The less seriously injured had to hike a half-mile through hot, craggy terrain to reach medical personnel. It was several more hours before they were seen by doctors. And now comes the question of how they will get to their final destinations, possibly without their cars. The train carried 200 automobiles in 23 specially designed cars. "We have no idea how we're going to get home," said Charpentier, 42, who spent Thursday night at the Putnam Community Medical Center. Amtrak said it would pay for customers to get home any way they wanted -- plane, train or automobile. Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board was releasing some vehicles to Amtrak, which is looking at ways to reunite the cars with their owners. As NTSB investigators did their work, a switching engine began the arduous process of clearing the busy track, moving a half-dozen upright train cars away from the wreckage. Workers with chain saws cleared away pine trees uprooted when the train left the tracks to make room for repairs to the rail. At the time of the accident, passengers in the dining car were preparing for the 5 p.m. seating. The dining car windows were unbroken. The only glass shards flying were from dishes. Passengers were trapped inside the dining car for 90 minutes with no fresh air. "One woman had a horrible gash over her eye," Oliver said Friday. Doctors had wrapped Oliver's right leg in elastic bandages and ice. She leaned on a cane. "I was lucky," said Oliver, a retired nurse who owns a winter home in Naples and was headed home to Norristown, Pa. "I'm just grateful I'm alive." Those who needed the most help were fastened to boards and carried up ladders. "There were elderly people on top of another car," said Mrs. McGarry. "I don't know how they got down." Her husband didn't want to leave the compartment. His legs felt like jello. His heart medication makes him bleed so easily that the tiniest scratch can be devastating. "If I had fallen and gotten cut, I could have bled to death," McGarry said. Mrs. McGarry coaxed him out with the help of some burly volunteers. But he was soon panting so much he had to rest in the arms of a stranger. Then came the chest pains. After a 45-minute ambulance ride that "felt like five hours," he was admitted to the Puntam hospital and monitored overnight. The couple will miss their granddaughter's communion Sunday. "All I want to do is get home," Mrs. McGarry said. Travelers stowed most of their belongings in their cars. The McGarrys missed their medications. Others didn't have clothes to change into. Bea Coltun, an uninjured septuagenarian, fretted Friday that she'd never see her tax forms again. "Everything that is essential to us is in our trunk," said Coltun, who was returning to New York City from Boca Raton condo. Sharon Mahoney, the 52-year-old general manager of the Auto Train service, was on the train at the time. She was not injured, and helped direct the rescue efforts, according to Amtrak. NTSB investigators will examine the event recorders from the train, devices similar to the cockpit data recorders on commercial aircraft. They record speed, throttle position, braking action, horn activation, time and direction of the train. Experts on railroad accident reconstruction said the NTSB also would look at mechanical damage to the cars and locomotives, damage to the tracks, the conditions of the soil under the tracks and the weather at the time of the accident. "They'll reconstruct what happened very much like an airplane crash," said Steven F. Wiker, an industrial engineer at the University of West Virginia who specializes in railroad accident reconstruction. CSX Transportation, which owns the track, was criticized for poor and potentially unsafe conditions in a federal inspection two years ago. The Federal Railroad Administration found "significant safety issues," citing overtaxed and lax maintenance crews, deteriorating tracks and ignored defects. The accident happened about an hour into the trip. The two engines and first two cars stayed on the track, but 14 of the 16 passenger cars and seven others derailed in the remote area 60 miles north of Orlando. The death toll was reported at six Thursday but was revised Friday by investigators and medical officials. In all, 166 passengers were taken to hospitals. Twelve remained hospitalized, including a 73-year-old woman in critical condition. Uninjured passengers were taken to 10 hotels in the Orlando area. Amtrak planned to take some passengers to the accident scene to help them cope with the aftermath. The names of the dead were not immediately released but they were described by medical examiners as a 75-year-old man, a 67-year-old man, a 64-year-old woman and an elderly woman. Hometowns were not provided. The Amtrak Reform Council, a body created by Congress, reported this year that Amtrak made money in 2000 only on the Auto Train and on rail lines in the Northeast. The wreck could be a devastating blow for the financially shaky rail service, the head of the National Association of Railroad Passengers said Friday. The special cars used on the route already are in short supply. Spring and early summer are Auto Train's busiest season, so it's likely Amtrak would have to bring in cars from other parts of its system to get the Auto Train back on track, said Ross Capron, executive director of the Washington-based National Association of Railroad Passengers. -- Times staff writer Jean Heller and Times wires contributed to this report.
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From the Times state desk Lucy Morgan
From the state wire
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