Two Amtrak employees were killed – including a Savannah man – and more than 100 passengers were injured when their train slammed into a parked CSX freight train near Columbia, S.C., early Sunday morning.
It’s unknown how many other Georgians were among the injured. Train 91 was traveling from New York’s Penn Station to Miami with eight crew members and 139 passengers when it crashed.
This is Amtrak’s third deadly wreck in less than two months.
Investigators are looking into why a switch was aligned to divert the southbound Amtrak train onto a siding where the CSX freight train was parked, said National Transportation Security Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. CSX owns and controls the tracks at the site of the wreck, he said.
“Of course, key to this investigation is learning why that switch was aligned that way,” Sumwalt said. “There is catastrophic damage to each of the locomotives. In fact, I would say that the Amtrak locomotive would be not recognizable at all.”
The NTSB, Sumwalt added, will interview the CSX freight train crew and its dispatchers. CSX officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday afternoon.
Michael Kempf, 54, of Savannah, the train engineer, and Michael Cella, 36, of Orange Park, Fla., the conductor, were killed in the crash. Both were in the lead Amtrak engine, which derailed at 2:35 a.m. in Cayce, S.C., outside Columbia and about 70 miles northeast of Augusta.
No one answered the phone at Kempf’s home Sunday and his relatives did not respond to requests for comment. Kempf’s Facebook profile say he previously worked for the U.S. Army. His Facebook timeline, which was still public Sunday evening, features numerous patriotic postings supporting the American flag, U.S. troops and the Pledge of Allegiance. Kempf wished his wife a happy birthday on June 2, calling her “mi amor” and thanking her for “being the person you are and always supporting me in my crazy life.”
“Without you, things just wouldn’t be the same,” he wrote. “We have had an amazing journey and it’s not over yet.”
Lexington County, S.C., Coroner Margaret Fisher said she spoke with his family Sunday.
“As you can imagine, they are very, very distraught,” Fisher told reporters in an emotional news conference. “We are working with them to make sure they are taken care of. Being out of state and having a deceased loved one in another state is very difficult.”
Fisher added she was grateful there were no other fatalities, given that there were more than 100 people on the Amtrak passenger train.
“Any time you have anything that happens like that, you would expect more fatalities, but God blessed us and we only had the two,” she said. “We wish that we didn’t have any fatalities.”
Two other passengers were in critical condition Sunday, Fisher said. Twenty-seven others who suffered minor injuries were brought to Lexington Medical Center. All but two were discharged by 11 a.m. Sunday, said hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Wilson.
Dozens of other passengers streamed into Pine Ridge Middle School in West Columbia for food and shelter. A local restaurant fed them eggs, grits and sausages. About 30 volunteers assisted with the effort.
“They seem to be in fairly good spirits,” said Cuthbert Langley, a Red Cross spokesman for the South Carolina region. “They are, of course, on their cell phones communicating with their loved ones. But they seem to be doing OK, given the circumstances.”
Passenger Derek Pettaway told CBS News he was sleeping when the train began “shaking violently” before coming to a sudden halt.
“You knew we’d hit something or we’d derailed,” Pettaway said.
The force of the crash dislodged a seat and knocked it onto passenger Tronia Dorsey’s legs, her son, Andre Neblett, told The Associated Press. The 43-year-old woman described a terrifying scene inside the dark compartment, with people screaming and babies wailing, the AP reported.
“It was chaos,” Andre Neblett said after driving from North Carolina to retrieve his mother’s suitcase from a Red Cross shelter. “She said she was just waiting on somebody to get to her.”
Elliot Smith of West Columbia told The State newspaper he was at a friend’s house nearby when they heard the crash. To him, it sounded like a propane tank exploding.
“The sound was so loud, you instantly knew it was bad,” he said.
On Wednesday, an Amtrak train carrying congressional Republicans to a party retreat collided with a garbage truck at a crossing in rural Virginia, killing one of the truck's passengers. Six others were injured.
And on Dec. 18, an Amtrak train jumped its tracks on an overpass south of Tacoma, Wash. Three people were killed and dozens were hurt. The train was traveling at more than twice the speed limit when it derailed.
Amtrak President Richard Anderson said his organization is cooperating with the NTSB investigation of Sunday’s crash.
“We are doing everything in our power to operate a safe and reliable railroad,” Anderson, the former head of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, told reporters in a conference call Sunday. “We always prioritize safety as the very first priority at Amtrak and will continue to do so.”
