Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said Wednesday the equivalent of a “black box” has been recovered from the deadly Amtrak train crash and is being analyzed, and the National Transportation Safety Board said they are still investigating the cause of the Tuesday crash that killed six people.
“We are heartbroken at what has happened here — we have not experienced anything like this in modern times,” Mr. Nutter said at a news conference. “We will get to the bottom of it and figure out what happened, why it happened — but that will take some time.”
Samantha Phillips, director of Emergency Management for the city of Philadelphia, said hospitals treated more than 200 patients Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
“We are in the process of making sure that everybody is accounted for,” she said, asking people to call Amtrak’s 1-800-523-9101 for information. “If you were on the train and are doing well, please call in and report that to Amtrak so that we can link that data together.”
Robert Sumwalt of the NTSB said they’ve had investigators arrive on scene between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
“We are setting up a multidisciplinary investigation to try and understand the factors that led to this accident,” he said, saying there will be an organizational meeting at noon to establish parties to the investigation and establish investigative protocols.
“You have a lot of questions, we have a lot of questions — we intend to answer many of those questions in the next 24 to 28 hours,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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