Two dead in Chicago train derailment (AP) Updated: 2005-09-18 10:58
CHICAGO - A commuter train derailed Saturday on Chicago's South Side, killing
at least two people and injuring more than 80, some of them critically.
Chicago
firefighters walk near the Metra commuter train, which derailed, Saturday,
Sept. 17, 2005, on Chicago's South Side.
[AP] | The double-decker Metra train was traveling
from Joliet to Chicago when the locomotive and its five cars jumped the tracks
about 5 miles south of downtown, authorities said.
Both victims were women, a 22-year-old who died on the train and a
30-year-old pronounced dead later at a hospital, said Judy Pardonnet, a
spokeswoman for Metra, the commuter rail system that services the Chicago area.
Seventeen of the injured were in serious or critical condition, said Assistant
Deputy Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the cars to derail.
All the track signals were working, and the track had just been inspected
Thursday or Friday, Pardonnet said. The National Transportation Safety Board was
sending a team from Washington to investigate.
In all, 185 passengers and four crew members were on the train when it
derailed in a neighborhood of homes and businesses. The tracks are on a raised
embankment next to a street, but none of the cars fell. Firefighters had to
raise ladders to the track to reach the scene.
Julie Arredondo was sitting on the upper deck of the train when the accident
happened.
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