Amtrak Cascades 501 derails onto Interstate 5 at Mounts Road; several passengers killed

An Amtrak Cas­cades train mak­ing its inau­gur­al run on the new Pierce Coun­ty align­ment that WSDOT has spent years work­ing to get open derailed this morn­ing over Inter­state 5 at Mount Roads, killing at least three peo­ple and injur­ing dozens more. South­bound I‑5 is closed for the indef­i­nite future and the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board is send­ing a “go team” to investigate.

Cas­cades 501 was between Taco­ma and Lacey when it went off the rails. It had depart­ed Seat­tle short­ly after 6 AM, and report­ed­ly derailed around 7:33 AM.

The con­sist includ­ed two loco­mo­tives. One of them was a new Siemens SC-44 Charg­er diesel-elec­tric. There were also twelve rail­cars (most of which were coaches).

Five auto­mo­biles were struck by the train when it derailed, the State Patrol said.

The new align­ment that Cas­cades 501 was run­ning on has been in the works since fund­ing was approved as part of the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act (ARRA) ear­ly in Barack Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy. It cost $181 million.

Sound Tran­sit owns the tracks, but does not oper­ate Sounder on the stretch of rail where Cas­cades 501 derailed. (Sounder ter­mi­nates at Lake­wood; it will one day ter­mi­nate at DuPont. Both end­points are north of Mounts Road.)

WSDOT — which is respon­si­ble for Cas­cades ser­vice along with Ore­gon’s ODOT — cel­e­brat­ed the com­ple­tion of the new align­ment and an accom­pa­ny­ing new pas­sen­ger sta­tion at Taco­ma’s Freight­house Square on Friday.

But joy has giv­en way to hor­ror. WSDOT’s Rail Office will now have to help the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board fig­ure out what went hor­ri­bly wrong.

“We are work­ing close­ly with mul­ti­ple part­ners, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, Sound Tran­sit, Amtrak, Pierce Coun­ty, JBLM and local emer­gency respon­ders to assess the sit­u­a­tion and ren­der assis­tance,” WSDOT said in a statement.

“After emer­gency response is com­plete, and the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board has released the scene, the train will be removed from the inter­state right of way. We antic­i­pate this will be a lengthy process due to the sever­i­ty of the inci­dent and the size and weight of the train cars. WSDOT is work­ing with oth­er agen­cies on any rerout­ing of traf­fic dur­ing the investigation.”

“The Amtrak Cas­cades train ser­vice is joint­ly owned by the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion,” the depart­men­t’s news release went on to note. “Amtrak oper­ates the ser­vice for the two states as a con­trac­tor, and is respon­si­ble for day-to-day oper­a­tions. Amtrak Cas­cades runs trains from Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, to Eugene, Oregon.”

“Today’s trag­ic inci­dent in Pierce Coun­ty is a seri­ous and ongo­ing emer­gency,” said Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. “Tru­di and I are hold­ing in our hearts every­one on board, and are pray­ing for the many injured. They are our top pri­or­i­ty, and I know first respon­ders are doing every­thing to ensure every­one has the care they need.”

The Gov­er­nor is now on the scene of the crash in Pierce Coun­ty with his team.

“Every­one should avoid trav­el­ing I‑5, and WSDOT is work­ing to open alter­na­tive routes through the area dur­ing the emer­gency response,” the Gov­er­nor added. “This morn­ing I spoke with my cab­i­net offi­cials, and we are in touch with Amtrak who we know are work­ing to pro­vide as much infor­ma­tion as possible.”

“WSDOT will have fur­ther updates on Twit­ter, those in the area can mark them­selves safe with Face­book Safe­ty Check, and I will be mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion with our team dur­ing the ongo­ing response.”

For those who had fam­i­ly mem­bers on board Cas­cades 501, there is a fam­i­ly reuni­fi­ca­tion cen­ter at DuPont City Hall. Amtrak says to call 800–523-9101 if you have ques­tions about any­one who was on board.

Seat­tle-area tele­vi­sion sta­tions like KING5 are offer­ing con­tin­u­ous live cov­er­age of the dis­as­ter with no com­mer­cial interruptions.

Eye­wit­ness­es have told mass media “some­thing did­n’t feel right” imme­di­ate­ly before the derail­ment, which result­ed in a loco­mo­tive and rolling stock tum­bling from the ele­vat­ed guide­way onto the south­bound lanes of Inter­state 5 below.

There is spec­u­la­tion that the train may have been going too fast, or that there was an obstruc­tion on the tracks, but at this point we sim­ply don’t have the facts we need to deter­mine what hap­pened and why. What we do know is that three peo­ple are dead, of the sev­en­ty-eight pas­sen­gers on board and five crew, and that I‑5’s south­bound lanes will be shut down for an indef­i­nite peri­od of time.

Near­ly all of those pas­sen­gers who sur­vived the derail­ment suf­fered injuries. The injured were tak­en to St. Joseph Med­ical Cen­ter, St. Clare Hos­pi­tal in Lake­wood, St. Antho­ny Hos­pi­tal in Gig Har­bor and Taco­ma Gen­er­al Hospital.

We will have more infor­ma­tion about this tragedy as it devel­ops. The News Tri­bune of Taco­ma has the best cov­er­age so far of the dis­as­ter. Here are a few of their thought­ful­ly report­ed sto­ries in case you’d like to read further:

• It should have been a cel­e­bra­tion for new $181 mil­lion train route. What went wrong? (Report­ed by Craig Sailor)
• ‘Every­thing went dark’ — pas­sen­gers speak about Amtrak derail­ment, after­math (Report­ed by Alex­is Krell and Craig Hill)
• Amtrak train derails onto I‑5 in DuPont. 6 deaths report­ed, high­way shut down (Orig­i­nal­ly report­ed by Sta­cia Glenn)

EVENING UPDATE: The NTSB has arrived on scene to start their inves­ti­ga­tion. Flood­lights have been set up to illu­mi­nate the dis­as­ter zone. Heavy machin­ery has been moved into a stag­ing loca­tion on the inter­state to extract the dam­aged, gut­ted rolling stock that is dan­gling from the over­pass or sit­ting on the road­way. I‑5 South is expect­ed to remain closed through tomor­row morn­ing’s commute.