LA Commuter Train Accident Injures 21 People

Some frightening news has emerged out of Los Angeles Saturday, precisely the sort of story that residents of SoCal would like to see less of. At about 10:45 a.m., a Metro commuter train struck a car and partially derailed in Los Angeles, reportedly injuring 22 people in total. At present nobody has died as a result of the crash, but the Los Angeles Fire Department revealed on Twitter that ten people have been hospitalized, with one person in "critical" condition, and another in "grave" condition.

It's a grim story, and an all-too-familiar one — just last month, a Metrolink train north of LA was derailed after a collision with a truck, sending 28 people to the hospital with varying degrees of injuries. (Clarification: Saturday's crash was a Metro Los Angeles train, not Metrolink.) Only one person died as a result of that accident, the train's engineer, Glenn Steele. On the basis of the LAFD's tweet about Saturday's incident, it sounds as though this could end up causing a loss of life as well.

In a press conference about the wreck, which took place very near to the University of Southern California campus, LA County Sheriff's Department Sergeant Michael Verlich indicated that the crash was the result of "an improper turn" by the driver of the car. According to the Christian Science Monitor, one of the car's passengers was left in critical condition.

Luckily, it sounds like the vast majority of people impacted by this made it out with only minor injuries. But with two people apparently facing severe, life-threatening injuries, and this being the second derailment in Southern California in two months, it seems a safe prediction that questions about train safety will be looming large in the weeks to come.

Hopefully everybody pulls through, in spite of that worrying tweet from the LAFD. From the sounds of things, the car involved was wrecked in the extreme — the critically injured rider had to be cut out of the totaled vehicle, according to the AP.

Correction: Reporting that the derailment was a Metrolink train was inaccurate — Saturday's derailment was a Metro Los Angeles commuter train, not Metrolink. This post has been revised to correct the record.

Images: KABC/CNN