Early Monday morning, a Blue Line CTA train jumped the tracks at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, injuring at least 32 people in the process. Fortunately, none of those injuries were life-threatening, but new security footage appears to show just how much worse things could have been. In the as-of-yet unconfirmed footage, we see the train barreling down the tracks, crashing through the platform, and then up an escalator and set of stairs.
(The NTSB hasn’t commented on the video yet, but the images in the video appear to match up with photos from the scene of the crash, so it definitely looks legit. Still, we’re going with “appears” and “allegedly” for now.)
An investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board announced yesterday that an “automatic stop” was activated on board the train, but said that there is, obviously, doubt as to whether it happened with enough time to spare. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a rail union official also went on the record as saying the driver may have fallen asleep at the switch, as she had been “extremely tired” after working multiple overtime shifts.
The track is expected to remain unusable for at least a week, and the investigation into the crash is ongoing.
