'Absolute disastrous mess': 6 dead, 150 injured after Amtrak train derails

by Sara Sidner, Kevin Conlon and Saeed Ahmed

5-13-2015

Philadelphia (CNN) Latest developments:

• National Transportation Safety Board officials are at the accident scene.

• A sixth person has died as a result of the Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia, a doctor at Temple University Hospital said Wednesday morning.

• One of the six killed was a student at the U.S. Naval Academy, a source says.

Full story:

As day broke in Philadelphia on Wednesday, rescue workers were still searching inside the mangled wreckage of an Amtrak train that derailed the night before, killing at least six people and sending another 150 to various hospitals.

Among those killed was a midshipman from the U.S. Naval academy in Annapolis, Maryland, a source close to the Naval Academy said.

Temple University Hospital medical director Herb Cushing said Wednesday morning that 25 passengers were still at Temple -- the closest trauma center to the crash site -- eight of them in critical condition.

Cushing said many of the injuries suffered by passengers came when other passengers or objects fell on them.

'Disastrous mess'

"It is an absolute, disastrous mess," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said of the crash site. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 was traveling from Washington to New York carrying 238 passengers and five crew members when it derailed about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia.

The impact tore cars apart, sending seven of them flying from the tracks, and left the engine a mangled mess.

"We have confirmed an engine and all seven cars derailed," a U.S. Department of Transportation representative told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the engine and two cars were left standing upright, three cars were tipped on their sides, and one was nearly flipped over on its roof. The seventh one is "leaning hard," they said.

"We do not know what happened here. We do not know why it happened," Nutter said. There was no indication the derailment was a result of an impact with another train, he said.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the scene Wednesday morning to begin the investigation into what happened.

So far, there's nothing to indicate the incident was an act of terrorism.

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