How emergency responders rescued trapped Metro-North passengers

Emergency responders, including NYPD, FDNY and MTA rescuers, climbed over rails and maneuvered rocky terrain with heavy equipment to reach trapped and injured passengers in a derailed Metro-North train in the Bronx and then carry them out on stretchers, officials said.

Rescuers were seen carrying chain saws and a ladder had been propped against one train car that had flipped on its side.

They inflated an air bag to lift one train car off a passenger pinned underneath and used saws to cut away metal to reach victims, said Edward Kilduff, FDNY Chief of Department.

Other officials said rescuers broke windows to get to passengers. “The train traveled a good distance. The cars bounced around pretty good,” Kilduff said, adding that most of the injured suffered blunt trauma.

“We had evidence of a couple of people under a couple of cars, so we actually used air bags to lift the car — the air bags can lift tremendous weight — we used the air bag to lift the car off one, if not two people who were trapped,” he said.

All seven train cars were derailed, several laying on their sides. Shoring them up to stabilize the cars before going in to retrieve passengers was a challenge, Kilduff said.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said rescue boats and helicopters were on hand to search the river. Divers had gone into the water to search for a passenger initially believed to have been thrown into the river, but it was determined that nobody was in the water, Kelly said.