about the number of injuries resulting from this derailment. they did put out this statement. amtrak is aware of an incident with train 501 cascade service from seattle to portland. emergency services are on the scene and amtrak management is responding. some injuries are reported. the pierce county sheriff s office now says injuries and even casualties are reported. so that is an update over the last couple of minutes. numbers to come on that. john hyatt is a railroad investigator and he joins us on the phone from seattle. john, you know, you have to think that somehow amtrak operating on this new stretch of track so they could open up this new station had to play a role in this accident. it s awful early to tell. there are also some reports the train struck a truck on the track and looking at the
this picture but again, the eyes can be deceiving so at least one car left dangling and another car apparently flat on the highway and perhaps straddling the guardrail or so it would seem the guardrail in the median separating the traffic flow in the north and south directions on i-5. this all happening again on the first day of service for the amtrak cascades tacoma dome station. the cascades train had just departed that station when the accident took place. melissa: conflicting reports. if you listen the reporters and look at reports online as to what may have happened you can see there is a lead car that is still up there and is still on the rails. there was a turn that they were coming into that apparently they had slowed to take. there were also reports coming from on the train we heard about earlier in the show that the train had struck a truck. all of these are coming from
running from seattle down to portland. this incident taking place 40 miles south of seattle or so. we re told about 70, 75 people were on board the train at the time. there was this great sense of excitement in the morning because this was the day the inaugural day for this new line. people who were on board to begin with were telling our local affiliate they were excited about this new line, helping to relieve congestion and open up major commuter line, high speed commuter line on the pacific coast and have this happen on day one is a real shocker. that leads to a lot of questions. whether there might have been any rob wiproblem with the upgr tracks, with the trains the on the tracks. you have to assume they did a lot of testing before they opened the line up. now a lot of questions as a result of that. one other note. this did have positive train control. that is that technology which
we re working with joint base lewis, using some of their access roads to detour traffic as well. we hope to alleviate some of the backup soon. jon: a huge military base in that area. the traffic camera that melissa was alluding to appears to be at dupont where officers are slowing down what should be a four-lane interstate and taking them all off the dupont exit. that will tie up traffic for quite some time. yes, it is. folks, i m sorry to cut you short. i have to go meet with my command staff. melissa: thank you so much for that. so jon, one thing that jonathan hunt pointed out to us as you look at the picture, it is not just the train that s dangling there. there is also one that has fallen down onto the highway. jon: one car down on the highway. i believe i can see that in
continuing our breaking news on that derailment in washington state. joining me by phone, former chair of ntsb and jo ling kent. bring us up to date. reporter: 75 passengers were aboard and five crew members were aboard going from seattle to portland. this happened south of tacoma where the train derailment happened. a bit more about what kind of train this cascades train is. it seats about 250 passengers. the train was relatively empty at the time. only 78 people were aboard. the baggage car, two first class coach, seven standard cars and a cafe car, lounge car and the service car that provides the electricity for the train.