This was the scene just a few miles from where I live yesterday. Over at the Daily Beast, Michael Daley writes about Amazing Grace in the Bronx:
The third car had people trapped inside.
But the fourth was the most challenging to the firefighters because it was sitting at a tilt and swayed as they worked to extricate the injured.
“The car was teetering back and forth,” later said FDNY Capt. James Ellson of Rescue 3. “So the removal of those people was getting a little tricky.”
In all the cars, there were more injured people than the firefighters and cops could immediately assist in those early minutes. The rescuers, who are geared to helping whoever needs it, had to make a difficult request to the passengers who were less badly injured than others.
“It’s very hard to ask a civilian who was just involved in an accident to help us,” Ellson would recall. “They had just been involved in a very bad train accident, and now I’m saying, ‘I need your help, I need you to help people who are in worse shape.’ I asked everybody, ‘Listen, look at the people next to you, and if they need help, help them.’ And they did it.”
82mph approaching a 30mph curve is asking for trouble.
Casey Jones you better watch your speed.
My village, as is the Yankee Stadium station are stops on the Hudson Line, I've been on a train hundreds of times around that curve. This is truly shocking and tragic for the victims.
The reality of a train derailing into a zig zag, stopping mere feet from the Harlem River draws back the curtain of invincibility from the MTA. It's not automatic clock-work like efficiency; it's people on the job, and it rarely happens but people make mistakes.