Amtrak Crash: Passengers Recall Panic, Fear After Train Derailment
— -- The train hurtled forward, into the darkness, into the panic, into the fear.
Beth Davidz was among the passengers tossed about when Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 derailed in northeast Philadelphia, killing six people and leaving dozens of others seriously injured.
She remembers her train car shifting right, then jumbled luggage and passengers, shattered glass.
“Suddenly, you’re just kind of being tossed, you can't tell what's up, what's down, it's dark, you're just kind of being hit by bodies,” she said.
Amid the darkness, the train began filling with little pockets of light from passengers’ phones.
“In that moment, it was just like, this could be it. I mean, I can't believe this is happening,” Davidz said.
After Davidz exited the train, she talked to her mother on the phone, downplaying the accident. She didn’t want her mother to worry.
Andrew Brenner said he was traveling to New York to start a new job. He was sitting in the final train car, and escaped seriously injury.
“There were people there to help guide us off the tracks because there were some live wires in the area,” Brenner told ABC News.
Paul Cheung, an Associated Press photographer, happened to be on board. He smelled smoke. People tried to gather their belongings. He heard someone instructing the passengers to leave the train.
“Some of the [train cars] were just completely mangled up into a giant ball of wreckage, and then some just completely flipped over sideways," Cheung said. "And those that flipped over sideways, I could see people coming up through the window."
Yameen Allworld, a Philadelphia-based MC, was sitting in the train’s fourth car.
Following the crash, he helped others to get off the train safely.
“Well I first felt, it just felt like our car was leaving the ground. I started floating in the air and I just felt my body lifting up and going forward over seats and started toppling so I just decided to like try to brace myself, you know,” he said.
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