Im erin burnett. Outfront we begin with breaking news. The amtrak train that derailed near philadelphia was speeding bigtime. Traveling 106 miles an hour at the time of the crash. More than twice the 50mileanhour speed limit. We are also just learning at this moment the engineers name from three amtrak employees. Heres what we can tell you. His name is brandon bostian. Drew griffin is going to have much more on the man at the center of this in just a moment. The mayor of philadelphia on cnn calling that engineer reckless saying theres no excuse for the outofcontrol speed. We also now know that bastian did apply the emergency brakes just before the crash but only slowed the train town to 102 miles an hour at impact. 102 to 102, then it crashed. You can see the curve where the train derailed. As you can see, it very sharp. Horrific crash killing at least seven people. More than 200 injured, many of them in Critical Condition at this hour. It is almost 24 hours after this crash but there
with more than 11 million passengers traveling along the northeast corridor between washington and boston each year it has become one of the busiest, most complex, and technically advanced rail systems in the world. engineering professor george bibel says while traveling by train is largely safe passengers should be more concerned about the state of the tracks than speeding engineers. while most derailments are caused by equipment error, rail problems are a common one. the rails can fracture from metal fatigue or they can move around and shift or anything else that moves. common ones are wheels bearings axles. reporter: coincidentally, the site of tuesday s crash in philadelphia is in the same area where the nation saw one of its deadliest train accidents in history. in 1943 a train traveling from washington to new york went off the tracks killing 79 people.