NEWS

'It didn't stop. It didn't slow down.' Stunned commuters describe Hoboken train crash

Susan Miller
USA TODAY
Passengers rush to safety after a N.J. Transit train crashed in to the platform at the Hoboken Terminal on Sept. 29, 2016.

Shell-shocked commuters with laptops and briefcases stepping across a carpet of glass and crushed metal. Passengers bending and navigating around twisted poles and tangled debris.

Rescue workers tending to the injured, many bleeding, on the cement of a street corner across the Hudson River from New York City.

The stunning images told the story of a commuter train crash on a gray day in Hoboken, N.J., on Thursday. NJ Transit officials say the train plowed into a rail station during the morning rush hour, injuring scores of people. At least one person, who was not a passenger, was killed by debris.

Witnesses described a train that flew through the station and smashed into the barrier at the end of the track, landing in a covered area between the station’s indoor waiting area and the platform.

One dead, 108 hurt, many questions after N.J. train tragedy

The train "didn’t stop. It didn’t slow down,” said Jamie Weatherhead-Saul, a Wood-Ridge resident, who was on board Thursday  morning. “The train just kept going.”

Weatherhead-Saul, who was between the first and second car, said she heard screams from the first car. “We felt the impact but nothing like any of those other people (in the first car),” she said.

"It was going really fast, and the terminal was basically the brake for the train,” Nancy Bido, a passenger on the train, told WNBC-TV in New York, according to AP.

“By the time I turned around and registered the train was coming, it had already completely crossed to the pedestrian walkway,” said Chris Mann, 34, who was less than 100 feet away from the train when it derailed. “It all seemed to be very fast.”

“People were crying and one woman … was bleeding but a lot of people were still filing in unaware,” Mann said.

Rich Scardaville, who was aboard the train, described an “ungodly loud bang, like an explosion” before the lights went off and “everyone went flying,” according to the Wall Street Journal. He said the train appeared normal but abruptly “lurched forward at the last minute.”

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Passenger Bhagyesh Shah told WNBC-TV in New York that the already-full train was especially packed in the first two cars for commuters who wanted to make a quick exit into the station.

The station is the final stop for several lines and a transfer point for commuters heading to Manhattan via ferries or a PATH train.

Shah said passengers in the second car broke the emergency windows to escape.

“I saw a woman pinned under concrete,” Shah said. “A lot of people were bleeding; one guy was crying.”

Contributing: Christopher Maag and Scott Fallon, the Bergen County (N.J.) Record, the Associated Press 

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