but what s your reaction? well that s certainly on the list of things that will derail a train, it s far more common for an equipment failure to derail a train but about the only operator error that can derail is going too fast on a curve. surprisingly high speed derailment is quite survivable unless you derail into something solid and you have crushed volume which appears to be the case here. jim, give s a sense from your expertise and experience when they got to the scene last night, it s pitch black dark a scene that mayor nutter said he never seen before in his entire life. where do you begin to help people find people? what are first steps? the first steps at the accident are taken by the emergency response and that s to clear the train, clear the injured and lockdown the scene. the ntsb when they arrived this
by congress but not fully installed in the united states positive train control would have slowed or stopped the train at the point that it was speeding and we don t know that yet. and i hate to speculate because it s just speculation but that s why the ntsb is there, to keep a lid on facts because speculation is the worst thing you can have going on in the background. great points there and we are waiting. at 5:00 p.m. we ll have an update. thank you both so much for your insight today. next we turn to washington, where the train did originate and several transportation hearings today on capitol hill that are taking on an even greater significance, breaking coverage continues here in the cycle.
into a debate about policy. but it s just way too early. senator casey, thank you so much. thanks for your time. back to you, krystal. interesting to hear senator casey s perspective. again, we re going to hear from hospital officials in just a few moments and we will also get an update from the ntsb at 5:00 eastern. that s where we want to focus now. what are next steps here for federal investigators. george is a professor of mechanical engineering and author of train wreck the forensics of real disasters and a railroad investigator in charge for the ntsb knows a thing or two about the first steps out there. thanks for being with us. george, i wanted to start with you, we did have nbc news spoke to two sources who said the train was traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour when the event occurred and mayor nutter in a press conference refused to confirm
the ntsb now has the black box. it has been sent to delaware and will be analyzed at amtrak head quarters to tell them things like speed, bumps in the track, throttle. when the brakes were used nbc is reporting that the train was going 100 miles per hour and mayor and other investigators would not respond to that at the press conference whether or not the train was going that fast and whether or not that was an appropriate speed for this turn in the road. now in terms of the manifest they do have a manifest but still trying to match up people who may be at the hospital who may have left the scene without telling anyone. maybe someone didn t even get on the train. mayor nutter spoke just about 15 minutes ago. here s what he had to say. the search is very very active, as we literally just leave the scene. there are significant number of personnel from the fire department, police providing security and amtrak personnel down on the tracks and now off
occurred what does that mean? well it s called access on amtrak and what it is it reads the speed of the train and it compares it to what the mandatory speed is and it will stop the train in the fact that the engineer is speeding. it was not on this track at this time. jim 71 years ago, some people have been comparing it to one of the worst train accidents in our nation s history, 1943 killed 79 people and injured 117. it just so happens that the crash last night was almost an exact place of this crash in 1943. it sounds like the track has not been updated much. has there been a concern that something like this might have happened? that s up to the ntsb to answer. one of the most wanted recommendation is positive train control and positive train control had it been in effect in this area it s now man damted