17 killed in Los Angeles train collision

Los Angeles, September 13: A freight train collided with a rush-hour commuter train in suburban Los Angeles on Friday evening, killing at least 17 people and injuring scores of others, many of them critically. The crash was potentially the deadliest accident in the history of the Southern California commuter trains.

The accident happened in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley, north of downtown Los Angeles.

Almost immediately after the collision, firefighters, using cranes and ladders, swarmed a toppled and grossly twisted car, reaching through smashed windows and trying to evacuate passengers. Firefighters said they expected the death toll to rise as they attempted to search through the toppled car.

A stream of helicopters flew in to remove the injured -- some of them gravely so, legs snapped and hanging sideways off stretchers, heads bleeding, arms twisted behind. Scores of ambulances and hundreds of police officers joined the rescue effort, which fanned into a nearby park where a triage unit was set up.

About 250 firefighters were pressed into action. "The carnage is significant," said Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles County supervisor.

A spokeswoman for the Metrolink commuter rail system said about 350 people might have been on the afternoon train.

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