Two people were killed when an Amtrak train traveling from New York to Savannah, Georgia, struck a backhoe that was on the tracks south of Philadelphia and partially derailed. The Fire Department in Chester, Pennsylvania confirmed the two deaths. Seventeen other people were injured, including one seriously.
The two people killed were Amtrak employees “with more than 40 years of service between them,” reports NBC News. They weren’t traveling inside Amtrak Train 89 that was carrying 341 passengers and seven crew members on board at the time of the accident.
“They were on, in or near the backhoe that was struck,” Ruth Miller, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, told the New York Times.
The accident comes less than a month after 32 people were injured when a train derailed in Kansas and less than a year after eight people were killed and more than 200 were injured when a train derailed near Philadelphia on May 12.
