KHTS AM 1220 is an affiliate of CNN. CNN contributed to this report.
After more than two dozen passengers on Metrolink Train 102 were injured in a crash Tuesday morning, many Santa Clarita Valley residents may be without train transportation to Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara.
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Many train services including Metrolink and Amtrak have been suspended until the wreckage in between Oxnard and Camarillo has been cleared.
All Amtrak service between Los Angeles and Goleta have been suspended, according to ABC.
Metrolink officials are constantly updating their Twitter feed with updates on which trains will be in use.
A website has been set up with information from Metrolink, medical center officials and emergency response officials.
CNN Story: Official: Truck driver says he mistakenly turned onto tracks in California rail crash
The driver of a produce truck said he accidentally turned onto railroad tracks instead of a highway Tuesday morning, became stuck and was hit by an oncoming Metrolink passenger train in Southern California, a fire investigator told CNN.
The incident, which occurred just before 5:45 a.m. between the cities of Oxnard and Camarillo, injured at least 28 people, four of whom had severe enough injuries to need immediate attention, Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Mike Lindbery said.
Joe Garces of the Oxnard Fire Department explained the driver’s apparent mistake. He said the 54-year-old driver saw the train, fled and called 911.
Sergio Martinez, a battalion chief for the Oxnard Fire Department, said the driver was found unhurt.
The driver, who works for a produce service from Yuma, Arizona, has not been arrested and is cooperating, Garces said.
After the accident, emergency personnel treated people on tarps on a road adjacent to the tracks, video from CNN affiliate KABC showed.
At least eight patients have been taken to Ventura County Medical Center, spokeswoman Sheila Murphy said.
The vehicle at the scene was “fully engulfed,” in flames, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Five cars derailed, three of which came to rest on their sides, said Margaret Remmen, a management assistant at the Ventura County Fire Department. Officials have completed a search of the cars, she said.
About an hour after the incident, Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson, speaking from San Bernardino County, said that Train 102 hit the truck at Rice Avenue.
The cars did not crumple because of “collision energy management technology,” in which Metrolink invested after a 2008 Chatsworth, California, crash. In that incident, a freight train collided head-on with a Metrolink commuter train, killing 25 people.
The technology, which causes the crash energy to expand outward instead of inward, probably prevented a “larger scale of injuries,” Johnson said.
The train cars are also equipped with windows that emergency personnel can easily remove to evacuate passengers, he said. An hour after the crash, “a vast majority, if not all” of the passengers had been evacuated, and the injured were treated on the scene or transferred to hospitals.
“How that individual came to stop on the track is yet to be determined,” he said, adding that the crash “could not be avoided from a rail standpoint.”
Regarding reports that the truck’s driver is in custody after fleeing the scene, Johnson said he had no information.
“I do know it was at a crossing. I don’t know why a truck was there,” Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten told CNN earlier.
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