One person killed when Amtrak train carrying GOP lawmakers to retreat hits garbage truck
One person was killed, and six were injured when an Amtrak train carrying Republican lawmakers to an annual party conference in West Virginia hit a truck here Wednesday morning.
None of the dozens of members of Congress aboard the train, or their accompanying family members and aides, were among the seriously injured. The person who died was one of three men in the disposal truck that had entered the railroad crossing.
The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team of nearly two dozen people to the site. Federal Railroad Administration officials also went to the scene to assist, a U.S. Transportation Department spokeswoman said.
Several lawmakers, including Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), helped first responders carry one of the injured passengers to an ambulance — a role that Flake said was “too reminiscent” of the lifesaving measures they took to help House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) after a shooting on an Alexandria baseball field this past summer.
Officials at the University of Virginia Medical Center said six patients were transported there from the crash. One was reported to be in critical condition, four were being evaluated, and one had been discharged Wednesday evening, according to hospital officials.
Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.) was among those taken to a hospital as a precaution. A spokesman for the congressman said he suffered a concussion and was treated and released.
The crash cast a somber tone on the GOP’s long-planned huddle at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The retreat would carry on “with an adjusted program,” organizers said Wednesday. President Trump is scheduled to address the group Thursday.
“The president has been fully briefed on the situation in Virginia and is receiving regular updates,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected by this incident.”
The crash occurred about 11:20 a.m. at a rural railroad crossing in Crozet, about 110 miles southwest of Washington. The train was carrying about 450 people.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said it happened without warning while many members were milling around on the 10-car train. There was no perceptible braking before the crash, he said.
“It was quite a jolt,” Cole said. “It was just, ‘bam.’ ”
“It was a hard impact,” Flake recalled. “It threw everybody up in the air a little.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who was reached by telephone aboard the train, said it took about a quarter-mile for it to stop, and a few of the passengers in his car were “roughed up.”
“Most of us hit a knee or a head on the seat in front of us, but nothing too serious on board,” he said.
The crash was “loud and surprising,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). “We saw debris go by the left side of the train. The part of the truck we [could] see was decimated. Very relieved when the train came to a stop and [was] still on the tracks.”
Outside the car, the truck looked as if it had been cut in half, Lee said. Garbage blanketed the grass. And it was clear that the people inside the truck had fared worse.
Immediately after the crash, Cole said, many members who are also doctors tried to leave the train to help the three men who were on the disposal truck. Security officials on the train discouraged them from getting off, he said, but several members did, including Wenstrup, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Reps. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.), Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
“They were very insistent,” Cole said. “Anybody who had any [medical] training was moving quickly.”
Roe, a retired OB/GYN, said it was immediately clear one of the men was deceased. “I think it was an instantaneous death,” he told reporters Wednesday evening. “I don’t think he suffered.”
The wife of one lawmaker — Kathryn Bucshon, an anesthesiologist — tried to intubate the other injured man to maintain an airway. She was unsuccessful, but Wenstrup, a former Army combat surgeon, said the man’s instinctive resistance was a positive sign: “That showed us that there was a chance because he was bucking it.”
Source:- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/01/31/gop-retreat-train-collides-with-truck-no-serious-injuries-reported/?utm_term=.935e885f4356
