Dozens of people were injured when a Southern California commuter train slammed into a truck and derailed in coastal Oxnard. No fatalities were reported.
The truck caught fire and three rail cars derailed and toppled over after the crash of Metrolink’s Ventura County Line Train 102 shortly before 6 a.m. PT. Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that at least 30 people were injured.
Sergio Martinez, a battalion chief for the Oxnard Fire Department, told CNN the truck driver fled the scene and that authorities found him unhurt and took him into custody.
Fire-rescue personnel set up a color-coded triage area with green, yellow and red tarps at the site, KNBC-TV reported. The tarps indicate the severity of the victim’s injuries, with red being the most serious and green indicating minor injuries.
Oxnard is about 75 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
On September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on, killing 25 people. That crash was the deadliest accident in Metrolink history.
Last year Metrolink unveiled a new safety program, saying it was the nation’s first rail line to introduce positive train control technology. The technology uses GPS and other systems to determine when it should override the train engineer and slow or stop a train to avoid an accident.
