Engineer says he doesn't remember fatal crash

THE MAN WHO could best explain why Amtrak Train 188 quickly accelerated to twice the speed limit Tuesday night just before it careened off the tracks at the sharp curve at Frankford Junction - killing eight people and injuring roughly 200 others - reportedly has told his attorney that he doesn't remember what happened.

Robert Goggin, the Philadelphia-based attorney for Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian, 32, told ABC News yesterday that his client suffered a concussion and other injuries - and that although he was devastated to learn about so many dead and injured, he doesn't recall the derailment.

"He remembers driving the train," Goggin - who didn't return a phone call from the Daily News - told ABC. "He remembers going to that area generally, [but] has absolutely no recollection of the incident or anything unusual. He recalls, the next thing he recalls, is being thrown around, coming to, finding his bag, getting his cellphone and dialing 9-1-1."

Bostian's reported memory loss certainly won't help investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, who had another busy day at the crash site in the hardscrabble, industrial pocket between Frankford and Port Richmond. They reviewed an on-board video to develop a harrowing timeline of the Northeast Corridor train's rapid acceleration in a little more than a minute from 70 to 106 mph, when the engine and seven passenger cars finally jumped the tracks.

While they worked, rescuers finally completed their grim task of recovering bodies from the two most heavily damaged cars, bringing the death toll to eight, while authorities also released the eight names.

But even before the final body was located under twisted metal yesterday morning with the help of a police cadaver dog, top officials from here to Capitol Hill began to engage in a surprisingly vitriolic round of finger-pointing.

They clashed over government spending on rail and other infrastructure and why the modern technology that can prevent this type of accident wasn't in place at one of Amtrak's most heavily travelled stretches on the Eastern Seaboard.

The Day 3 focus began to move away from the search-and-recovery operation and onto the two huge unanswered questions: What was the role of engineer Bostian - who voluntarily took a blood test and turned over his cellphone, according to his attorney - and what's behind Amtrak's failure to install Positive Train Control technology on this section of northbound track through Philly?

Philadelphia U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, in a statement and a subsequent phone interview, said he was dumbfounded that Amtrak hadn't finished installing PTC in the Northeast Corridor, seven years after Congress mandated the technology in response to a deadly commuter-rail accident in California. He called for a public audit of progress on automated controls.

"If it's the money, come to us, because how much does saving lives cost?" a dismayed Brady asked. "The first order of business is protecting our citizens, and we're not doing that."

Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman, speaking to reporters near the crash site in Frankford, defended the beleaguered federally subsidized rail company.

Boardman said that Positive Train Control - which sends warnings to an engineer when a train is exceeding speed limits and can actually stop the train if those warnings are ignored - is in place now between New Haven and Boston and had been scheduled to be installed on the northbound tracks in Frankford by this December.

"We spent $111 million getting ready for Positive Train Control," the Amtrak chief said. "We had to change a lot of things on the [Northeast] Corridor to make it work, and we're very close to being able to cut it in."

But those reassurances didn't silence critics, who said that high-speed rail in the United States simply isn't keeping pace with the rest of the world, partly the result of both actual and proposed budget cuts, including a $252 million reduction in Amtrak's subsidy passed by a House committee just hours after the tragedy. That would peg the subsidy for U.S. intercity rail at $1.1 billion, less than half of the $2.5 billion that President Obama had sought at the start of the year.

Former Philadelphia Mayor and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, speaking about the vote late Wednesday night on MSNBC, erupted, saying "[T]hose SOBs, and that's all I can call them, these SOBs didn't even have the decency to table the vote." Then yesterday morning in Washington, GOP House Speaker John Boehner lashed out at a reporter who'd asked about Amtrak funding: "Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?" Boehner called the discussion "ridiculous."

That was the same word used by Pennsylvania Republican budget-hawk Sen. Pat Toomey, in a phone interview with the Daily News, to describe the allegations that Amtrak budget cuts were any kind of factor in the crash.

Toomey recently had endorsed a measure that would give passenger-rail lines a five-year extension to install PTC, but he said that was because local agencies like SEPTA were facing complications, including getting the necessary wireless frequency, and because he thought Amtrak already had completed such work on its major lines. He noted that he'd helped procure additional money for SEPTA's PTC work. "I don't think it's a money issue," he said.

At a news conference yesterday, Mayor Nutter chastised reporters for asking about the technology. "We are not going to spend the afternoon talking about Positive Train Control . . . We have people who died," the mayor said. "We have people who were injured."

He said 43 injured survivors remained hospitalized - 18 at Temple University Hospital - although presumably some were released later in the day.

Yesterday, Gerald Wydro, the chairman of emergency health for Aria Health's three hospitals, recounted the grueling hours after the crash, when 56 wounded passengers flooded the health system's emergency rooms.

"I've been training for mass-casualty traumas for two decades," Wydro told the Daily News. "To see it put into practice for the first time was great in its own way, but also troubling."

Wydro was at home watching the news unfold on television Tuesday when he got the call to head back to the ER. He and his staff treated a wide range of injuries from minor bruises and broken bones to collapsed lungs and damaged spinal cords. Four patients remained in Aria Health's care yesterday, two in critical condition.

Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan, the Police Department's commander of homeland security, said that cops have an "ongoing, active criminal investigation underway."

NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said investigators have made arrangements to interview engineer Bostian in the coming days. They've also subpoenaed his cellphone records from the night of the crash, as is standard procedure, Sumwalt added in a subsequent interview.

Sumwalt said data from the train's on-board recorders allowed investigators to piece together a more comprehensive timeline of the minutes leading up to the derailment.

From those data, including "good quality" video, the train accelerated steadily for more than a minute before the derailment, he said. The ACS64 electric locomotive clocked in at 80 mph 43 seconds before the crash, then at 90 mph about 10 seconds later. At 16 seconds before the derailment, it was traveling at 100 mph. Bostian engaged the emergency brakes when the train's speed hit 106 mph.

Sumwalt said that being aware of the 50 mph speed restriction at Frankford Junction is part of every Amtrak engineer's training. "It's reasonable to expect any engineer to know the speed limits on the route he travels," he said.

Amtrak's Boardman said that the complex track repairs are continuing and that the railroad hopes to have Philly-to-New York train service partially restored by Monday and fully restored by Tuesday. Amtrak issued an update last night saying that effective today, service between New York and Boston will operate on schedule.

Meanwhile, Amtrak worker Bruce Phillips, who was traveling on Train 188 as a passenger to New York, filed the first lawsuit over the crash yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia. The Legal Intelligencer said that Phillips suffered brain damage and other injuries and was filing as an employee under the Federal Employers' Liability Act.

Sullivan, who oversees the Police Department's counterterrorism, SWAT and related units, said that no specific drill is in place for train derailments.

But that's not to say that local authorities weren't prepared. On Monday, in fact, Fire Department and police officials had attended a "mass-casualty" training exercise at the invitation of the city's Office of Emergency Management. Some of those first-responders were rushing to Frankford about 24 hours later to put those lessons into practice.

"They jumped into action and let their training take over," said Sullivan. "Our cross-training with the Fire Department medics proved to be incredibly effective in how we responded."

Last night, only the two most damaged cars - the train's business class and "quiet car" - remained at the scene.