Gov. Cuomo said Monday that speed probably caused the deadly Metro North derailment on a sharp curve in the Bronx that killed four passengers and injured 63 others.
“I think it’s going to be speed-related,” he said. “It’s not about the turn. I think it’s going to be about the speed,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show.
Cuomo added that investigators are still trying to determine if the excessive speed was caused by “operator error” or a mechanical or other problem.
And he called the scene of the tragedy horrific, saying “It was actually worse than it looks.”
Later, on Fox’s “Good Day New York,” he said it was hard to describe what he saw.
“This was breathtaking,” Cuomo recalled. “One minute everything is fine and the next minute we lost New Yorkers in a really tragic and violent way.”
Federal investigators said Monday they planned to interview the train’s engineer today as they worked to determine what caused the accident.
“We are hoping to interview the train operator today” said Earl Weener of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The feds were also searching for surveillance video from nearby buildings and planned analyze the train’s “black box” for data about speed and whether the brakes had been applied.
“Today we will go through the validation process with the onboard event recorders. We will verify the throttle settings and the break applications. Luckily, both the locomotive and cars had event recorders that were functioning,” Weener said.
“We hope to gather video surveillance over the next day or two. The video helps determine the movement of the cars, tipping, rolling, that kind of movement. The speed we will be getting directly from the event recorders on board.”
Weener said federal investigators will remain on the scene for up to 10 days before heading back to Washington, DC, to study their findings.
The train was loaded with about 150 passengers and four crew members as it hurtled around a tight Bronx curve just north of Manhattan before the wreck Sunday morning, an accident engineer William Rockefeller blamed on brake malfunction.
“It was just a bloodbath,” a shaken FDNY worker said of the scene of twisted metal and shattered glass along a bucolic stretch of the Hudson River, where the accident occurred just north of the Spuyten Duyvil station at 7:22 a.m.
Rescue crews were on Monday righted two of the seven derailed passenger cars, and used sniffer dogs to look for more possible bodies, but none was found.
“We’ve already OK’d the uprighting of the locomotive to stop the fuel spill. We’ve also OK’d the uprighting of the cars that are on their side to look for any possible … further injured or fatalities,” Weener said.
Rockefeller, 46, of upstate Germantown, was said to have told emergency responders that the brakes didn’t work.
“The guy’s distraught over the accident and the people who were injured,” a source said of Rockefeller, a 20-year MTA vet, who was among those hurt.
Meanwhile, Hudson line service was suspended south of Tarrytown, where buses were ferrying passengers to White Plains so they could catch a Harlem line train into the city.
Others scrambled to find a way to work Monday morning.
Evalyn and Bill Lyons drove from home in Putnam Valley to Croton station for a ride to Yonkers for a bus. Like many commuters, they left earlier than usual to allow for extra time.
“It’s a little nerve wracking because we don’t know what to expect. On the way home we may have bigger problems. I think it might be [inconvenient] but it was an unfortunate accident,” Evalyn Lyons said.
“This hasn’t been bad. We’ll see how the bus goes. They’re doing the best they can under the circumstances,” said Pat Gonda, who was commuting from Croton to Grand Central.
Others blasted Metro-North after the latest in a series of disruptions that has plagued the nation’s busiest commuter line this year.
“Changes need to be made, the rails need to be upgraded. Our lives are in danger here,” said Martha Pepi, who commutes from Marble Hill to Sleepy Hollow, and was already late for work at 7:30. “When we pass that curve I think about it every day.”
Jeff Arbbite, 41, heading from Phillipstown to GCS, said the tight curve had been on his radar.
“That curve always concerns me. We’ve heard about brake trouble before, we can hear the conductors talking to each other,” he said.
All of those killed were New Yorkers. They included two women — Ahn Kisook, 35, of Queens, and Donna Smith, 54, of Newburgh — as well as married dads James Ferrari, 59, of Montrose and James Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring, a “Today” shown technician for 20 years.
Three of the dead were thrown from the Hudson Line train, which had originated in Poughkeepsie at 5:54 a.m., bound for Grand Central. Their bodies were recovered between the second and third cars.
Passenger Emilie Miyauchi, 28, said she used her yoga mat to cover one of the victims.
“[She] seemed like she had lost most of her head. The side of the car was just covered in her blood,” she recalled.
It was the first time any passenger had been killed in Metro-North’s 31-year history.
Riders described chaos as the train flew off the tracks.
“I was just holding on . . . and people were flying around,” said Eddie Russell, 48, who was headed to work as a guard at SiriusXM. “I was afraid I was going to fall out the window.”
Joel Zaritsky said he was asleep and woke up as his train car started rolling over.
“Then I saw the gravel coming at me, and I heard people screaming,” he said.
The scene “looked like a toy train set that was mangled by some super-powerful force,” Cuomo told CNN on Sunday.
The first train car landed inches from Spuyten Duyvil Creek. NYPD divers searched the water to make sure no victims were thrown in.
The train, pushed by a diesel locomotive from behind, should have been going 70 mph before it slowed to 30 mph to round the curve, officials said.
Passengers told probers that the train seemed to be going much faster than usual.
“I have no idea why. I take this train every morning, and they always slow on this curve,” passenger Frank Tatulli told WABC-TV.
At least 11 people were critically hurt, including a man in his early 40s who suffered a spinal-cord injury and may be paralyzed, authorities said. A 14-year-old boy also was critical.
Another six people were hospitalized in serious condition.
At St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where many of the victims were rushed for treatment, Dr. David Listman said seven of the injured remained in critical condition and that two othrrs had been released.
“It’s certainly going to be critical going forward, as people are ready to go home, that they are provided with the support services they need to be ready to go home after such a tragic accident,” said Listman, predicting that many survivors would suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“For a lot of these people the MetroNorth train from upstate to New York City was their way of commuting to work and I think people are going to have to contend with getting back to normal life at some point, getting on a MetroNorth train that goes right through that same area. I think that’s going to be very difficult for them, honestly. I don’t know how they’re going to handle that.I’m sure there’ll be some amount of post traumatic stress disorder, ” he said.
“The 14-year-old who was with his father, who was also injured, takes MetroNorth to go to school in The Bronx. I spoke to his mom and she was very concerned, and rightly so, that from his perspective how is he going to get back on a MetroNorth train to come to school every day? And from her perspective as a mom, how is she going to put him on a MetroNorth train to go to school? I had not a lot of advice or consolation for her yesterday. “
Three city cops were also injured. The most seriously hurt officer, Elsie Rodriguez, was on her way to work at her domestic-violence post at the 40th Precinct station in The Bronx, said sources, who added that she broke her collarbone.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly on Sunday visited Rodriguez at St. Barnabas Hospital in The Bronx. Mayor Bloomberg — who had been MIA for most of the day, with staffers refusing to say where he was — also dropped in to see Rodriguez on Sunday evening.
“We chitchatted about her job and how I was going to be unemployed, and she thought that was funny,” Bloomberg said.
Asked about why he hadn’t been at the accident scene, the mayor responded, “What can I do? I’m not a professional firefighter or a police officer. There’s nothing I can do! What I can do is make sure the right people from New York . . . are there and have all the resources that they want.”
Two other cops were treated at Montefiore Medical Center, also in The Bronx. They were identified as Richie Hernandez of the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit and Gabriel Rodriguez of the 42nd Precinct. Rodriguez, who was on his way to work, was treated for a leg injury and released, sources said.
An NYPD school-safety officer also was on board, along with a Police Department recruit, but neither was hurt, sources said.
Weener said six teams of investigators would be probing everything from the train’s speed and instruments to its maintenance and personnel records and the condition of the tracks.
“Our mission is to understand not just what happened but why it happened,” he said.
Cuomo insisted that the train route’s curve had nothing to do with anything.
“Trains take the curve every day 365 days a year, so it’s not the fact that there’s a curve here,’’ he said. “There has to be another factor.’’
The accident was the second involving a Metro-North train in six months.