- The two trains were traveling on the same track around 10:30 am when they collided
- Four children are among the injured
- This is a breaking news story
Three people are seriously ill and 35 others were injured after a passenger trunk collided with a snow plow on a busy commuter line near downtown Chicago.
Fifteen ambulances were already dispatched to the scene of the accident between two trains on the same line, 1,000 feet outside Howard Station in the Rogers Park neighborhood, shortly after 10:30 a.m. today.
Chicago Fire Department (CFD) officials said a two-year-old child was among four children injured, and that 23 people were taken to the hospital and another 15 were treated at the scene.
Shayla Smith heard the crash as she boarded a Purple Line train at Howard and said passengers on her train began screaming.
“I just heard this horrible booming sound,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“It was like a strange boom sound. It felt like we were going to fall over and I was wondering what’s going on? My body was shaking.”
The accident happened shortly after 10:30 a.m. Thursday morning in the Rogers Park neighborhood
Ambulances lined nearby roads as at least 15 were sent to treat the injured
In a statement, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) said: “According to preliminary information, at approximately 10:39 a.m., we received a report of a Yellow Line train making contact with railroad equipment at the Howard Rail Yard.
“Service on both the Yellow and Purple Lines has been suspended.”
The CTA train was “traveling at a normal speed” when it struck the snowplow, which was “not traveling very fast at all,” said CFD district chief Robert Jurewicz.
Both were heading in the same direction, but the train was traveling at about 30 miles per hour, while the crew was at a “slow crawl” of about 10 miles per hour, his colleague Larry Langford said.
“The train was much faster and came after the team.”
The passenger train was traveling south from the suburb of Skokie, Illinois to the Rogers Park neighborhood in north Chicago.
Seven of the injured are CTA personnel.
CFD Assistant Deputy Chief Keith Gray said most of the injuries were bumps and bruises, with some head wounds.
Passengers on a train in nearby Evanston had to be evacuated when the CTA cut power to the Purple Line after the accident.
“My administration is closely monitoring the Northside train derailment and will deploy all available resources,” Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Thank you to the CFD firefighters and first responders on scene.”
Some people were treated at the scene for ‘bumps and bruises’, but three are in critical condition
The CTA train was “traveling at a normal speed” when it struck the snowplow, which was “not traveling very fast at all,” CFD District Chief Robert Jurewicz said.
Chicago Fire Department officials said four children were among the injured
This is a breaking news story.