Rescuers Work Among Carnage

Ruben Landa was working next to the tracks outside the Costco warehouse when the steel uprights and walls of the building shuddered from the force of train cars slamming into earth.

Landa hopped a chain-link fence and ran toward the wreck.

"It was dark. I saw people crying, people screaming in pain, but not at the top of their lungs," he said. He climbed into a rail car that had split open and found a man trapped beneath a seat.

"I grabbed him underneath his shoulders," Landa said. "He said he couldn't breathe."

Not far away, an eerie feeling passed through Glendale Fire Capt. Greg Godfrey as he rushed toward the shattered Metrolink train. It was, he realized, the same train he used to ride to work from his home in the San Fernando Valley.

But in the dim light of dawn, as survivors crawled from windows and limped bleeding down the railroad tracks, Godfrey said, he could barely recognize the mess as a train.

"It was just total disarray, with twisted metal everywhere, and seats that were so mangled you couldn't even tell they were seats anymore," he said.

Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Police Department's Northeast Division, three short beeps came over the radio at 6:03 a.m. The announcement, "train derailment," prompted officers to run for their cars.

For the scores of bystanders, firefighters and police officers who rushed to the scene of Wednesday's Metrolink derailment, the experience proved to be one of the most difficult and gruesome of their lives.

At the nearby Costco warehouse, employees rushed to the scene with fire extinguishers.

Mark Zavali, a 20-year Costco employee, had been unloading goods since 4 a.m. when he heard the crash.

Outside, it was still dark, but flames coming from one of the derailed train cars cast a faint glow.

"Diesel fuel was pouring out onto the ground. We got it all over our clothes. We were scared it was going to catch on fire," said Zavali, 39. "We saw scores and scores of people coming out of the train. Some of them didn't even have a scratch on them."

Juan Guzman watched as his co-workers pulled a badly injured man from the wreckage.

"They couldn't even hold his hand," said Guzman, who said the man appeared to be in his 60s. "There was blood everywhere. His bones were all busted up. His legs were like spaghetti, and one of his arms was bent all the way back."

Zavali helped carry the man to the parking lot.