Three dead as train hits car at California crossing

Three people were killed and two others, including a child, were injured after an Amtrak commuter train crashed into a car in Brentwood, Northern California, on Sunday afternoon.

Contra Costa County fire protection district said three people, all identified as women in their 50s, were declared dead at the site of the accident.

Steve Aubert, a fire marshal with the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District, classified the child’s and two adult men’s injuries as being “major”, according to the New York Times.

All three were transferred to the John Muir Medical Center, local media reported, but while the injured child was taken via ambulance, the injured adult was transported for treatment by helicopter, hinting that the injuries could’ve been more serious.

There were close to 90 passengers onboard the five-car train, but no one travelling on the locomotive was injured in the incident, according to a spokesperson for Amtrak.

Authorities said the incident took place at around 1pm local time in the 3000 block of Orwood Road on a dirt road in Brentwood, about an hour’s drive from San Francisco.

The four-door sedan had pulled into a long rural dirt driveway when the Amtrak train struck it, reported The Mirror.

The car came to a rest about 60 feet away from the tracks.

“It’s not uncommon that we’ve had accidents at that crossing,” Mr Aubert was quoted saying during an interview with local reporters.

Local reports said that two bodies were found lying on a gravel embankment 25 feet away.

Fatima Jimenez who was attending a fundraiser nearby said that she heard the sound of the crash and went to the site to find two women and a child lying in a pool of blood.

“People fainted when they heard what was going on,” she said to local media.

Mr Aubert told the New York Times that the rural and largely agricultural site where the Sedan crashed with the train, located about 60 miles east of San Francisco, is a “highly potentially dangerous” crossing point, adding that the first responders receive calls about incidents occurring there at least once or twice a year.

And despite the lack of guardrails or signals, Mr Aubert noted that trains are still permitted to go 80mph.

“If you’re not careful and if you’re coming down the track,” he said to the Times, a locomotive travelling down the track and a car driving across the crosspoint “can come together quite rapidly.”