page_title: 2008 Chatsworth train collision
section_title: Casualties
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 Chatsworth train collision / Aftermath / Casualties
caption_attribution_description: Recovery workers flank the rear of the Metrolink locomotive after it was removed from the lead passenger car, where most of the serious injuries and death occurred.
context_page_description: The Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22:23 p.m. PDT on Friday, September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California. The scene of the accident was a curved section of single track on the Metrolink Ventura County Line just east of Stoney Point. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the cause of the collision, the Metrolink train ran through a red signal before entering a section of single track where the opposing freight train had been given the right of way by the train dispatcher. The NTSB blamed the Metrolink train's engineer, 46-year-old Robert M. Sanchez, for the collision, concluding that he was distracted by text messages he was sending while on duty.
  This mass casualty event brought a massive emergency response by both the city and county of Los Angeles, but the nature and extent of physical trauma taxed the available resources. First responding officer Tom Gustofson described the wreck as “beyond human description”. Response included CEMP as a first responding unit requested by LAPD.
context_section_description: A total of 25 people died in the collision, including engineer Sanchez and two victims who died at hospitals in the days following the crash. This event is the deadliest railway accident in Metrolink's history, and the worst in the United States since the Big Bayou Canot train disaster in 1993.
  A total of 135 others were reported injured, 46 of them critically, with 85 of the injured transported to 13 hospitals and two transported themselves. Air ambulance helicopters medevaced 40 patients. LAFD Captain Steve Ruda reported that the high number of critically injured passengers taxed the area's emergency response capabilities, and patients were distributed to all 12 trauma centers in Los Angeles County. Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills treated 17 patients, more than any other hospital.
  Captain Ruda said his firefighters had never seen such carnage. Austin Walbridge, a train passenger, told a TV news reporter that the interior of the train was "bloody, a mess. Just a disaster. It was horrible." Emergency responders described the victims as having crush-type injuries. Dr. Amal K. Obaid, a trauma surgeon who practices at USC University Hospital where several victims were treated, described their injuries in more detail, "They have head injuries, multiple facial fractures, chest trauma, collapsed lungs, rib fractures, pelvic fractures, leg and arm fractures, cuts in the skin and soft tissue. Some have blood in the brain."
  The Los Angeles County Coroner set up an air-conditioned tent that functioned as a temporary morgue at the site. One off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer was among the confirmed deaths, as was the Metrolink train's engineer,
  an employee of Veolia Transport, a contracted operator of Metrolink.
  One of the passengers who died was a survivor of the 2005 Glendale train crash.
  Another had been commuting by train since Metrolink's inception in 1992.
  Many victims were residents of suburban Simi Valley and Moorpark on their way home from work in the Los Angeles area.
  The four other crew members of the two trains survived.
  The conductor and engineer of the freight train were trapped inside the lead locomotive while it was engulfed in flames; the firefighters who rescued the pair found them banging on the thick glass windshield, unable to escape. The freight crew also had a brakeman riding in the second locomotive who was injured in the crash.
  The search for victims came to an end shortly after 14:30 PDT on September 13, approximately 22 hours after the collision.
caption: Recovery workers stand near the rear of the Metrolink locomotive after it was removed from the lead passenger car, where most of the serious injuries and deaths occurred.
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