some of the cars flipped on to their side and sliding across the ground. others just twisted sideways. people falling on top of each other. this happened last night. the first call to emergency came in at about 9:28 p.m. amtrak 188 had just left the east 30th street station in philadelphia ten minutes earlier. believed to be at or near full speed when it reached a curve in the tracks and things went horribly wrong. 238 passengers five crew on board scrambling and falling into each other as the cars buckled. some of the people were able to climb out of the train cars by themselves. others had to be rescued. some had to be cut out of the train cars. the death toll has risen to six now. one more person who was critical has died. there are more than 140 who were treated in all. we heard earlier from the chief medical officer at temple university hospital about this incident. you mentioned a lot of police officer and firefighters. those numbers are over 200
treated in local hospitals. i want to bring in someone who s really critical to this effort, renee hughes-caldwell the ceo of eastern pennsylvania for red cross. it if you could give me a feel for the center that you ve been able to set up for those who need help, need to try to connect, need information and the coordination of the missing. we still don t have a full list of who might not have been on that train and who might be at that site. you make an important point, this is a very fluid situation. last night we managed two command centers. people were coming into 30th street station amtrak headquarters and coming into the community, so we staffed two locations. today we re staffing one location and we re working with amtrak, ntsb, and the city to pull together who s missing. most importantly, to work with their families, to bring them comfort. have you had a lot of their family members coming in and looking for name, manifests,
vehicle or thing that this train slid into there s a lot of action going around there with flashlights. it is an understandable question because there are a lot of areas of wrecked cars and abandoned vehicles almost looking like a scrap yard of sorts, i travelled that route on many occasions, on the northeast corridor and so it is understandable that you wouldn t be able to tell whether it was necessary part of the action scene or just wrecked vehicles that have been there for weeks, months even year ss. i can tell you, if this is what we think in terms of the amtrak run, if we re coming in from the direction of new york. the train should not have been traveling at all at that high rate of speed. there are multiple stops there, as you head into 30th street station, again, i don t want to get too far ahead of myself. in theory this was toward the
we were given the opportunity to get off in wilmington or we could continue on to 30th street station in philadelphia. that s where the rest of the passengers got off the train. it was a pretty hectic scene here a couple hours ago when we first got off the train. it was already 11:15 at that point. there weren t that. amtrak workers working so they were trying to deal with a lot of people trying to figure out how they would get home or to their destination. many people still trying to get back to new york city presumably, like myself. and we were told from amtrak workers on microphones that they would be amtrak was focusing on the crash right now. which you know as they should be. but that there would be no hotel accommodations no, buses. that people could call customer service starting tomorrow about
after last night s amtrak crash. that process is even harder because crews do not know exactly how many people they may be looking for. the drain car tipped over shortly the train cars tipped over shortly after train 188 left the nearby 30th street station in philadelphia and possibly before all passenger tickets had been collected. let s go to cnn s kate bolduan live near the crash site in philadelphia. any updates on any of the efforts to identify those who went to the hospital and those who still may be trapped inside a train car, god forbid? reporter: god forbid is right, jake. this has become a huge task obviously number one priority for all of the officials on the ground here. that s to try to figure out who and how many are unaccounted for and missing. the latest we have heard from the mayor is that they re not handing out a number. they don t want to get into the numbers of how many people they think are still unaccounted for. but it is a tedious task, it is a huge task.