华盛顿地铁相撞 多人伤亡

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Right now the death toll stands at 9 but there're still many injured over 70. Several are critically wounded and in area hospitals, this situation is very much unresolved. The investigators here are searching. They are looking for devices that may gage some type of the speed the train NO.112 , that's over my shoulder could have been going as quickly as 20 miles an hour upon collision. That is a very very heavy force.

We do know that Jeanice McMillan, 42 years old, was operating train 112. She lost her life in this situation. We don't know if it was a medical emergency, investigators do not know if this was about operator error, or if it was about train error, the brake's not working, or about the signaling computer system that these trains run on.

But there is also a much more frustrating question here this morning, and that is why was this old train still on the rails?

This is the scene just after 5:05 pm, rush hour, metro train 112  rear-ends train 214 while it's waiting to enter a station in northeast Washington. The collision is violent; commuters are in a life-or-death situation

"I just saw like a roller coaster, it was up in the air."
The crash is so forceful that the front end of the train crumples, known as telescoping, one train catapulting on top of the other. The impact crushes the cars like tin cans.

"And then we heard something. I leaned out the door, because the doors are open, I saw the front of our train up, over the other car, so and there is a lot, a lot of  hurt  people on that first train, first car.."

It was smoky, I saw it coughing.

"It was scary, man"

Inside people are trapped, injured, and also heroic, assisting others until first responders arrived, some making tourniquets out of T-shirts.

The seats came out of the wall.
The window was coming down.
It pushed us as we flew, only by our track flew.

This is the deadliest accident in metro history. One of the victims, the operator of the rear train, scores are taken to hospitals; over 200 first responders hit the scene. Investigators aren't sure if an operator error or a computer error like a signal problem may have caused the crash. Most transit systems often operate on sort of an auto-pilot that stops the train if there's another one on the track ahead.

"And obviously, that system did not work, and one of the first questions that the NTSB investigators will be looking at, is why didn't this important safety feature worked to prevent the crash".

And what about the trains involved? After crashes in 1996 and in 2004, investigators warned some metro train cars were old and prone to telescoping, sometimes called "coffin cars". Monday the car that telescoped was one of those older cars. So while this is probably a miracle that so many survived, many more may be asking: why did this happen at all?