A Metrolink train carrying morning commuters from Santa Clarita to downtown Los Angeles crashed into a pickup truck Monday at a crossing in Burbank and derailed, killing the truck driver and injuring at least 32 passengers and crew members, several seriously. One firefighter was also hurt.
Police said the driver had attempted to skirt around a closed crossing gate as the four-car train bore down at an estimated 70 mph. The impact severed the cab from the rest of the pickup, flinging shrapnel onto the Golden State Freeway, which runs parallel to the tracks.
The first two cars of the train overturned, sending passengers tumbling, one official said, like clothes in a dryer.
"It was a bang and a big fireball ... and, KABAM!" said Jack Mitchell, a retired Burbank fire captain. He watched the accident from his car and was among the first rescuers.
As the train pushed the severed cab of the Ford F-350, it ground the truck into a mangle of metal, leaving the engine block 600 feet from the charred remnants of the driver's compartment. It sounded "like a little earthquake," said Yoliany Forero, 39, a Burbank commercial truck driver who was standing nearby. Tanya Aguilar was stopped at a traffic light when she saw the truck make a left turn from San Fernando Boulevard onto Buena Vista Street, immediately in front of the train crossing.
"He slowed down and all of a sudden he turned right [around] the gates," said Aguilar, 23, who said she began honking her car horn to warn the truck driver. "I don't know how he couldn't see the lights because they were flashing. I think he was trying to beat the train. When he hit the track, the train hit him right away and it was a big ball of fire."
"It was awful," she said. "That poor man."
The driver was tentatively identified based on identification found on his body, police said, but his name was not immediately released.
Such accidents at railroad crossings have become increasingly common in Southern California as commuter rail lines have proliferated. In the last 10 years, 25 people have died in collisions involving cars or trucks and Metrolink trains, which run from Ventura to San Diego counties.
Several people familiar with the crossing where the accident occurred Monday said it has been the scene of several close calls. Burbank's chief traffic engineer promised changes to make it safer.
