Yes, this is where I often go hiking. Yes, these are the same tracks I was walking on a few months ago. Yes, if this happened on another day and only some minutes later I might have seen it in person.
The crash happened about 5 minutes before I left work (only a few miles south). As I was driving to the gym the news started coming in over the radio and caravans of police cars and fire trucks started passing me from all directions. For the rest of the night emergency vehicles would be running back and forth and the constant buzz of helicopters could be heard above.
Kind of weird considering I drove by the 2005 crash shortly after it happened.
Last night at last I checked the death toll was 6, this morning we’re up to 18. Indications are that this may end up being the worst train crash in California and possibly the US.
I found it in extremely poor taste last night that Fox/CNN/etc. couldn’t manage to cut away from their live correspondents in hurricane Ike’s way to cover this story for more than 30 seconds. By the time this was hitting the networks at least four people were confirmed dead from the crash, and how many were dead from Ike? They didn’t have Heraldo on the scene though – so they better get their money’s worth out of their talking heads. “Golly, I can barely stand up here on the coast, Bob, I really shouldn’t be here!”
Didn’t everyone in Ike’s path get warning to leave the area? I doubt anyone at Union Station was warned they might get impaled by a locomotive engine. Glad we’ve got our priorities straight.
Ah- but wait… Ike might disable half of Houston’s oil refineries raising gas prices by 30 cents for a week or two – now we know what is more important!
For me, I hardly heard coverage of Ike because everyone was talking about the crash. My mom lives in the neighborhood directly south of the accident.