and secondary search is going on now. walk us through what they re doing. well what they do now is check all areas of the train to make sure they ve accounted for as many people as they can. again they have to get official manifest. so they can be sure who was still on the train when it came through this area. again was not venturing to say what the numbers were at this point to put numbers together he said he couldn t do that until they had a head count. they had the manifest. their count is five fatalities. six critically injured. 53 people transported to area hospitals. total number of passengers believed to be 238 with five crew members on board. but this effort the lighting being brought here i m sure to allow them to go car by car
last evening amtrak 188, an amtrak northeast regional train departed philadelphia s 30th street station at 9:10 p.m. bound for new york city s penn station station. the train consisted of one locomotive and seven passenger cars. and according to amtrak there were 238 passengers and a crew of five for a total of 243 occupants of the train. at approximately 9:21 p.m., while traveling through a left-hand turn the entire train derailed. just moments before the
preliminary information but also confirming that as a number at least five people killed. in his words, we do not know what happened or why this happened. he said having walked the length of the disaster the length of the disaster is it quote, an absolute disastrous mess. i have never seen anything like this in my life. this was a four-alarm fire department response and they are calling this a level three mass casualty incident. the fire department is in command on scene in terms of the total number of people when it derailed, the number that we ve got now seems to be a firm number. 243 people total on board. that includes five members 238 passengers 5 crew members. again, very serious news tonight is that five people at least have been killed. now, in terms of the mangled wreckage that you see there, what that means for the survive
mass casualty incident. 200 police officers responded along with 18 medical units raising to the scene in port richmond east of philadelphia for the crash of amtrak 188 which left the station ten minutes earlier. believed to be at or near full speed when it reached a curve in the tracks and things went horribly wrong. seven cars including the engine left the rails. 238 passengers five crew on board. some passengers slamming into windows or each other and scrambling to climb out. most were able to get out on their own. some had to be rescued and cut out of the metal with hydraulic tools. six people confirmed dead including that most recent critical person who died at temple university hospital. more than 100 people treated in all. the people who were treated and released have to consider
even more trag whick you think about that passenger who told us how enraged and infuriated he is that when was caused by speed. tonight investigators are looking at the engineer s actions. along with the track. to try to understand why this train, which was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members, was traveling so incredibly fast. tom foreman is outfront live in the virtual room. tom what have you been able to learn as you piece this together second by second about how exactly this crash happened? reporter: what we know that is investigators had good reason from the beginning to suspect excessive speed. surveillance video, watch the train rushing by. if you know the length of the locomotive the length of the cars you compare them to a fixed point, you can calculate, and we did early today, that it was going a lot faster than it ought to be going, 200 yards short of the impact site. now, why does that matter so much? think about what brian was talking about, about controlling