California Metrolink train collides with truck, 30 injured

Three cars of a Southern California Metrolink commuter train have derailed near Oxnard, Calif. There are reports that at least 30 people were injured. 

Three cars of a Southern California Metrolink commuter train have derailed and tumbled onto their sides after a collision with a truck on tracks in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles.

Oxnard police Sgt. Denise Shadinger says the crash reported at 5:44 a.m. Tuesday caused a number of injuries. The Los Angeles Times reports at least 30 injured. 

Shadinger says the truck became fully engulfed in flames.

A KABC-TV news helicopter is showing firefighters treating numerous people at the scene.

Metrolink's website says the train was on a run from Ventura County to Los Angeles.

On Feb. 10, a Metrolink train derailed a few hundred feet from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. No injuries were reported in that incident and about 100 passengers were evacuated from the train.

In 2005, a Metrolink train crash left 11 dead and 180 people injured. The Los Angeles Daily News recently reported:

Since then, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which governs Metrolink, has shelled out more than $500 million to buttress safety along 512 miles of track stretching from Ventura to San Bernardino to northern San Diego counties. Upgrades include “sealed” grade crossings, safer rail cars and locomotives, automatic train stops and the nation’s first onboard rail video cameras. They also include the nation’s first so-called Positive Train Control, a high-tech system to prevent train crashes in lieu of human error or natural disaster, expected to fully roll out by spring.

“Nobody ever wants to experience anything like it ever again,” said Jeff Lustgarten, spokesman for Metrolink, of the Glendale and Chatsworth train crashes. “(They) shook the agency to its core. We are a safety-first agency.

“Metrolink has come a long way in 10 years: We can safely say we now have the safest commuter rail system in the country.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to California Metrolink train collides with truck, 30 injured
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0224/California-Metrolink-train-collides-with-truck-30-injured
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe