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Amtrak Passenger Train Derails in Washington State. Aired 1:30- 2p ET

Aired December 18, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[13:30:00] PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION & SAFETY ANALYST: Or there may have been a problem with the wheels of one of the follow-up cars. We just don't know yet. But it's not all that unusual.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Mary Schiavo is still with us as well. Mary, a former Department of Transportation inspector general.

Mary, I want to play the audio one more time and I want you and our viewers to listen carefully and have your thoughts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

911 DISPATCHER: What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED TRAIN ENGINEER: We were coming around the corner to take the bridge over I-5 there right north into Fawley (ph) and we went on the ground.

911 DISPATCHER: OK. Are you -- is everybody OK?

UNIDENTIFIED TRAIN ENGINEER: I'm still figuring that out. We have got cars everywhere and it's down onto the highway.

911 DISPATCHER: OK. Copy that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: You heard him say they were going around the corner over the I-5. Go ahead, Mary, and give me your thoughts.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION & SAFETY ANALYST: I'm still unclear about whether it was a pull engine or a push engine. It's difficult to tell for sure. His wording makes me think it was a pusher engine, meaning the train was the engine doing the work was at the rear of the train. I don't know. I'm guessing basing on what I have heard. To me, the operative language I heard is "we were coming into a curve." There have been so many recent tragedies where that's when things go wrong. You are going into a curve and either don't slow or you haven't been provided the right information. Whatever modifications were made to the tracks and whatever was done to allow this high-speed train to run over this section of track that didn't have high-speed service before, we don't know if they did the right analysis and told them the speed at which they should take the turn. If it was a pusher train, they will be pushing the cars ahead of them at speeds that haven't been tested with that many cars before. Again, I don't know the answer whether it was a pulling or a pushing train, or maybe they had engines at both ends, which would be unusual. They wouldn't both be working. The curve and his description makes me think it was the speed on the curve.

BLITZER: Peter, I assume you can see video and the pictures we are showing. This is the first time we've seen the full extent of this derailment. You see the cars on the ground. The police spokesman that said earlier, several of them upside down. Can you see these pictures we're now showing, Peter?

GOELZ: Yes, I can.

BLITZER: Describe what you are seeing.

GOELZ: This is really horrific and indicate that is the train was going at a high speed. Probably close to the 79 mile-an-hour limit. These cars --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: There you see the front. I think that's the front of the train. Still on the tracks, but everything behind it looks like a disaster.

Go ahead.

GOELZ: Yes. There is a lot of physics involved at that speed and weight when something goes wrong. This is just a horrific event. My guess is this train was traveling close to the 79 mile-an-hour limit.

BLITZER: You can see one car dangling over Interstate 5. But on the other side, you see the cars all over the place. Several of them upside down.

Mary, I hope you can see these images we are showing the viewers as well.

SCHIAVO: I can.

BLITZER: What jumps out at you?

SCHIAVO: I agree with Peter. It looks like this was a very high rate of speed to have that much inertia and force to literally fling that many cars off a track. If you have a train crash where it's a line or a rail out of alignment, you usually don't see that kind of a display of the cars. If it's an out of alignment rail, it's a different thing. It jumps the track, but you don't see this kind of far-flung tragedy. I would have to agree that it looks to me that it was a pretty high rate of speed. And let's hope they were not operating above the track speed limit. But going into a curve, it looks like the train could not take the curve at that speed.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIAVO: I know it sounds simplistic and nothing is ever that easy, but that's what it looks like. BLITZER: I want to point out, the governor, Governor Inslee, of

Washington State, just declared a state of emergency with Pierce County where the derailment took place.

Peter, when a high-speed train goes into a curve over an interstate, as is the case right here, is it up to the conductor to slow it down or is it automatic?

[13:35:01] GOELZ: In this case, I don't know if there is a positive train control, which is an automatic breaking system. We don't know what the track was rated for. It's up to the engineer to make sure he is operating within the guidelines and to make the correct decisions.

One of the other things, Wolf, they're going to look at on an accident like this, is the crashworthiness of these cars. Did they protect the occupants the way they were supposed to? How were people injured and how were they killed? Were these cars designed correctly? Did they perform the way they were supposed to? This will be a very complex investigation.

BLITZER: We heard, Mary, that was the engineer talking, saying there has been a problem. The engineer is OK, and he will be fully investigated and interviewed at length by the NTSB, right?

SCHIAVO: Absolutely. The do obviously did blood testing, and looking at his activities, or his or her activity in the days before. What's the sleep pattern? Did they have problems? Were they alert? The black box that records every time that hand touches any controls. Even the health and wellbeing, minimum wellbeing of the person running that train are taken into consideration. Again, you need to know, and presumably he or she had the right data, depending on who made up the crew, as to what speed you should take that curve. What speed you should be going. And were they observing that speed absolutely to the T and not exceeding it because, with this many cars off the track and that far flung -- you know, I should add one thing about the survivability of the cars. These cars, if they were the newest most- modern cars, they are kind of like sport playing. They can actually lean into the curves. You have a short of three-dimensional motion instead of a two-dimensional motion. They would have helped if they were operating properly. Take the curves at a high rate of speed, it's kind of like a racer on a motor bike. If you've seen motocross races, as they go into a corner, they lean. The modern train cars do that, too, and they help maintain, beat the centrifugal force on the tracks. They are pretty cool.

BLITZER: Look at that. This is the first time, Peter, that we have seen all those cars derailed on the ground. One of the cars hanging over Interstate 5. These are images that we don't often see. This looks like something -- you investigated, Peter, at the National Transportation Board. A lot of accidents, derailments. How unusual is this one?

GOELZ: This one is extraordinary. One of the worst in recent memory in terms of the physical destruction and physical display of the cars. As Mary indicated, these could be the newer cars that were designed to take the high-speed turns at 79 miles an hour. We consider it high speed, but the reality is, in the rail-industry world, it is not a high speed. We have trains going upwards of 150 miles an hour. This is a very destructive accident.

BLITZER: And, Mary, just to give us perspective, whether in Japan or elsewhere, the trains are moving a lot more quickly than they are in the United States.

SCHIAVO: Absolutely. I had a chance to work at Japan rail for a short period of time when I was inspector general. What's cool and interesting and different about Japan and the bullet trains is in the lines, there is no place, for example, where the trains meet surface traffic. They have overpasses and that's eliminated. They legality the tracks for them and they don't have these -- they don't have sharp curves to take. They had different laws than we do, and they were able to build it, and then, of course, deal with the lawsuits later as to people who didn't want the train going here and there and they were able to build this long, smooth, straight rails without having to worry about gate crossings and trucks on the track. It was built for that. This track is not owned by Amtrak. It had to go off to an inner-city line. This was a piecemeal track. In terms of what track they had to use, we just don't have a track system in the United States. It's going to come down to what Amtrak tested. Did they do the right thing? And could the track take it? Peter is right, this is not high speed. In Japan, some of the lines set speed records at 200 miles an hour.

[13:40:34] BLITZER: Some of us have seen the trains, and it's very outdated here in the United States what's going on.

I have another expert standing by, Peter, but remind me and our viewers why there are still no seatbelts on the trains.

GOELZ: That was interesting. I was going to mention that. They debated that issue for 20 years. It would not have prevented the injuries that occur inside. They would look at that again. They will see whether the crash worthiness of the cars includes whether there were portions of the interior of the car that caused injury. We'll be debating that question again.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Mary, let me -- finish your thought, Peter. Go ahead.

GOELZ: I was going to say, the real question is, if we are going to have high-speed-rail service in the United States, inner-city rail service, we are going to commit the infrastructure improvements to be done safely for the public.

BLITZER: Mary, does that make any sense at all? You are sitting on a train and there is a derailment. If you were seated, maybe you wouldn't be flying around inside the car and potentially getting very, very injured as opposed to being secure inside a seat. I never understood why -- it's not that much money to put seatbelts on the seats.

SCHIAVO: No. It makes no sense at all, but it does come down to cost benefit analysis. They looked at the fact of the risk of being injured or dying in a train crash over the years. They look at the risk and the cost of those injuries or deaths as opposed to the cost requiring everyone to be in a seat. That would also for a lot of trains limit the capacity. Everyone would have to be in a seat and buckled in. The train are packed to capacity. This one was not. People are hanging from straps and people are standing up and moving about the train and getting a cup of coffee or whatever they want to do. It's a tradeoff. And the government, the regulators make that trait off in congestion with investigations on what's the likelihood you will be killed or injury if not wearing a seatbelt and what the costs are, as opposed to the costs to Amtrak and another train operator if everyone is in a seat and belted in. No, it makes no sense, but you can take that further up the line of safety. It was discovered that a rear-facing seat is safer than a forward-facing seat, but people don't like those. They like to see where they are going.

BLITZER: Of the 78 passengers and five crew members, so many of them are now in the hospital, presumably almost all of them. There are multiple fatalities, unfortunately. I'm sure they will be wondering and investigating. And certainly, the passengers and their families and their loved ones and friends are going to be wondering, if they had been strapped in to good seatbelts, maybe they wouldn't be in the hospital right now. It's a sort of point of view I heard every time I covered the crashes, why don't they put seatbelts in. When I take Amtrak, I wonder why there are no seatbelts. Maybe there will be a push for seatbelts.

Everybody stand by.

[13:44:25] We have eyewitnesses who are on the scene.

We will continue our special coverage after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: We are following the major breaking news with a train derailment in Washington State. Seventy-eight passengers on board, five crew members. Multiple fatalities, we are now told, and scores of injuries.

President Trump just tweeted this -- I will put it up on the screen: "The train accident that just occurred at Dupont, Washington, shows more than ever why our soon-to-be-submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. And $7 trillion spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways and more crumble. Not for long!"

That from the president of the United States.

Christopher Karnes is joining us. He was on the train during the derailment and, interestingly, he's also the chair of the Pierce County Transit Advisory Board.

Mr. Karnes, first of all, are you OK?

CHRISTOPHER KARNES, CHAIR, PIERCE COUNTY TRANSIT ADVISORY BOARD (via telephone): Yes, I am fine. Thank you.

BLITZER: Where were you sitting?

[13:50:58] KARNES: We were on the third or fourth car of the train.

BLITZER: Tell us, walk us through what happened. I assume you were sitting when, all of a sudden, the car started to derail.

KARNES: Yes. Initially, we were sitting -- the train was going between 70 and 80 miles an hour. We could tell that because we were passing up traffic on the freeway. And we heard -- we felt a little bit of a jolt and then at a certain point the -- we could hear crumpling of the -- of the train car and we were catapulted into the seats in front of us.

BLITZER: And so people were flying around in the cars, is that what you're saying?

KARNES: Thankfully, the majority of people were seated, but there was one -- one elderly gentleman who -- who banged his head on one of the bulkheads.

BLITZER: And the car that you were in, where did it wind up?

KARNES: Yes. So we -- we went down an embankment to the right of the tracks, but there were other cars -- the other cars all derailed. The only thing that was left that was on the track was the rear locomotive.

BLITZER: Did -- was your car upside down? Because at least three of the four cars wound up upside down.

KARNES: No. Mine was right-side-up. But after the accident, we had to kick out the window, the emergency window, and claimed down the embankment in order to get help for the injured passenger.

BLITZER: You're on the Pierce County Transit Advisory Board. Tell us, was there concern about a high-speed train going along this route? Today was day one of this new route, we're told.

KARNES: Yes, that's correct. This was the inaugural run of this -- of this along this new segment. There was some initial -- there was some concern. It seemed to have been addressed during the environmental review process for this project which was lengthy.

BLITZER: The environmental review is how it would affect the environment. This was the Amtrak 501 Cascade Service. Today was the first time it had passengers.

KARNES: Correct. This is the first time it had passengers.

BLITZER: And did they do a thorough practice run? Did they do a thorough practice run to make sure that you go through these curves at high speeds it was going to be safe?

KARNES: Yes. For the last -- I believe for the last six months there have been trials running along the track. Initially, they started out doing trials of only 30 to 45 miles an hour, and then Amtrak continued -- continued testing up to 79 miles per hour.

BLITZER: And when they did all these trial run, all this testing, were there passengers and were there people in those cars? We're told that makes a significant difference.

KARNES: I'm not familiar with what the testing procedure is.

BLITZER: They say it's one thing for empty cars to be going at high speed or going into a curve. It's very different when there are a lot of passengers and a lot of luggage in that same car, and unless you've tested that thoroughly, you could have a problem. I wonder if you've heard that.

KARNES: Believe that is true. I don't know how many passengers were onboard. And I had boarded at an intermediate station in Seattle. And when the derailment occurred in Tacoma, Washington, and I don't know how many passengers were onboard.

BLITZER: And until the derailment, were there any other problems? How long had you been on the train?

KARNES: Yes, so the train arrived at my station at the Tacoma station about a half hour late. And after we departed, we seemed to pick up a pretty good pace.

BLITZER: And were there any indications that there might be a problem before the derailment?

KARNES: It -- it -- I don't think so.

BLITZER: You didn't have any suspicions? You felt comfortable? You felt at ease?

KARNES: Yes. No -- I mean, yes, we had -- we felt like the train ride was very smooth.

(CROSSTALK)

KARNES: And we had taken several -- we had taken several other curves that were of a harder angle at the same speed.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: And did they slow down? Did the train automatically slow down or did the engineer put the brakes on as he was going into those curves?

KARNES: No. I don't think there was time. I don't think there was time for any of that.

BLITZER: So, in other words, the train was going at a steady -- at a steady speed whether straight ahead or into a curve.

[13:55:01] KARNES: Yes, into a curve.

BLITZER: Yes. I wonder if that --

(CROSSTALK)

KARNES: Into a curve at an overpass above Interstate 5.

BLITZER: We're also getting -- Mr. Karnes, we are getting another tweet from the president. I want to read it to you. You were on that train. This is the president: "My thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved in the train accident in Dupont, Washington. Thank you to all of our wonderful first responders who are on the scene. We are currently monitoring here at the White House."

So tell us what this advisory committee that you're a part of, what it does.

KARNES: Yes. So we are just an advisory committee for the local transit agency. So I'm a -- I'm a transit enthusiast. I like to encourage people to use public transportation for environmental reasons and to -- and to reduce congestion, but it's not in any way affiliated with Amtrak or Amtrak Cascade.

BLITZER: So you were not directly involved in the review process leading up to day one today of this new service?

KARNES: No. No.

BLITZER: All right, Mr. Karnes, it's been helpful for us getting your thoughts. And fortunately, you are OK. That is good news, indeed, as well. We'll stay in close touch with you.

Thank you very much for your help.

KARNES: Thank you.

BLITZER: Once again, very pleased that you're OK. Unfortunately, a lot of the other passengers are not. Multiple fatalities, we are told, and multiple injuries.

Mary Schiavo is with us once again.

Mary, you're looking at the pictures, the live pictures we're showing and the engine. It jumps out at you that there's something extraordinary there.

SCHIAVO: Well, yes, the positioning of the engine -- there are two, so one, we've been talking about the one that was still left on the track, but these pictures that you've just put up, you can clearly see that there is a second one on the ground and it was obviously traveling at a rate of speed and, again, the fellow that we just talked to, Mr. Karnes made a good point that the train had taken other turns that were sharper than this at the same rate of speed, and it felt like to him it didn't slow down at those curve, but by seeing the engine lying on the ground, the speed and the inertial forces, and it appears to have turned around at such a rate of speed that it's -- it's -- it's literally not even in the same lineup, and the same line as some of the other cars, and so if it is not a speed issue then one would have to go back and once again consider is there something wrong with the track? Because something sent this very heavy engine flying at a high rate of speed so it would turn around and now there are two engines, one in the front and one on the rear.

BLITZER: The National Transportation Safety Board is dispatching a team to begin this investigation, which could continue for a long time.

All right, guys.

We are going to continue our special coverage. Stay with us right here on CNN. We'll take a quick break. We'll resume the breaking news coverage right after this.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Wolf. Thank you so much.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll take it from here.

This breaking story out of Washington, actually two major stores for you this hour on CNN. Moments from now, President Trump will outline his new America First strategy on national security. So of course, we'll bring that to you live with smart analysis before and after.

But we want to stay on this breaking story here on the west coast. Right now, rescue teams are on the scene of this deadly and grisly Amtrak train derailment in Washington State. Investigators say the train jumped the track during the peak of morning rush hour. If you know the geography in this part of the country, this is south of Tacoma. Just when you look at these pictures, you think of the people who happen to be on the highway at the time. And that's I-5. Of course, our thoughts and prayers go out to those who were on that train. Several of those cars, either upside down on the highway or just still dangling off that overpass.

We are expecting an update from officials in just a moment, so we'll take that live when we hear from the NTSB.

But what we know right now, let me be transparent, not a lot. And they're not putting a number on injuries or casualties. They're saying multiple fatalities at this point. Officials there say the deaths were all contained to the train. Miraculously, no one driving there on I-5 was killed. But I can tell you more than 70 people from the train cars have been taken to the hospital.

Just within the last hour, we got this dramatic radio transmission of the moment the train's conductors called 911. Here you go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED TRAIN ENGINEER: Track 501, emergency, emergency. We are on the ground.

911 DISPATCHER: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED TRAIN ENGINEER: We are on the bridge --