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At least three people were killed and more than 100 hospitalised with critical injuries after an Amtrak train derailed on Monday during its inaugural run on a faster route from Seattle to Portland, Oregon in US, sending passenger cars tumbling from a bridge onto a major highway.
Thirteen of the train’s 14 cars jumped the tracks near the town of DuPont, Washington State Patrol spokeswoman Brooke Bova said. Officials said 77 passengers and seven crew were aboard.
Five vehicles and two trucks were involved in the accident, and the highway was littered with fragments of the bridge and tree branches. Some motorists were injured but none died, authorities said.
Bova said all of the train cars have been searched, and emergency efforts would likely extend through the night and into the morning.
Several hours after the 7:34 am (15:34 GMT) crash, train cars remained dangling from the overpass, with others strewn across Interstate 5, a major West Coast route stretching from the Canadian to Mexican borders, says a Reuters report.
Some of the people aboard escaped by kicking out windows, passenger Chris Karnes told local news outlet KIRO 7.
The derailment occurred on the first day Amtrak trains began using the new inland route between the Washington cities of Tacoma and Olympia, part of a $181 million project to cut travel time, according to an October news release from the state’s transportation department and Amtrak.
The rerouting takes trains along I-5, enabling them to reach speeds of 79 miles per hour (127 km per hour).
Monday’s southbound Seattle-to-Portland train, whose scheduled departure time was 6 am (14:00 GMT), was the first to take the new route, which uses tracks owned by a commuter line.
It was not immediately clear whether the derailment was connected to the new route. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member told reporters it was too early to say what may have caused the crash.
A statement on Monday from the state transportation department said the track had undergone “weeks of inspection and testing” before Monday.