WESTBURY, N.Y. _ A Long Island Rail Road train struck a vehicle "trying to beat the gate" at a crossing Tuesday night in Westbury, killing the vehicle's three occupants before derailing and forcing the evacuation of nearly 1,000 passengers and crew on two trains, authorities said.
The force of the crash and subsequent derailment, which took place near a grade crossing by the station, tore apart the concrete platform at the commuter facility. After the eastbound train hit the vehicle, a second train going westbound with nearly 800 passengers on board, hit it as well.
Some passengers on the westbound train _ the 6:36 p.m. out of Ronkonkoma bound for arrival at Penn Station at 7:56 p.m. _ suffered minor injuries and were transported to Nassau University Medical Center, police said.
Nassau police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said the train was on its way to Penn Station when it hit the vehicle at the intersection of School Street and then derailed at about 7:21 p.m.
"All three occupants of the vehicle were killed," Ryder said. "The train then leaves the track and takes out the platform and then hits the north side of the platform and takes off about 30 yards of concrete, which goes through the train."
The concrete struck the first car, which held the conductor, Ryder said. The concrete that came through the train actually "chased" him and forced him to run back into the train to avoid it.
Passengers screamed and mothers quieted their children as flames erupted right outside the windows on one side of the westbound train, passengers said.
April Frazier, 31, of Brooklyn, was on the train, heading into Penn Station.
"I was sitting on the left side and all of a sudden the train really started rocking hard. Flames flared up on my side. I heard the conductor yell 'Brake, brake!' That's when I saw the flames," Frazier said. "That's when it got real. I'm still shaken up. You don't know. You think you might die. I'm thinking to myself 'It might be my last day.'"
Frazier said everything went quiet after that for a couple minutes, and a conductor ran through the car on the phone.
At a news conference at the crash site, LIRR President Phillip Eng said: "The gates were down, the lights were flashing" at the time of the crash.
He said those who try to beat the gate "take their life into their hands and the lives of others in their hands."
Hundreds of first responders, from firefighters to police officers to Metropolitan Transportation Authority police and medics, raced to the scene after the initial collision, which happened east of the Westbury train station.
Then emergency workers put a ladder up to the train and evacuated passengers, including a mother whose two small children were crying.
Kiara Jackson said she was on the westbound train traveling toward Jamaica when she heard the sound of metal dragging along the concrete platform, felt an abrupt halt _ and then saw a burst of flames.
"I knew that something was wrong _ we were in a panic," she said, her two young daughters by her side. "There was a screech and then there was a thud. They told us to walk westerly and there were two small fires. Smoke was kind of coming in so they told us to just keep walking."
Yuri Cruz, 32, of Bay Shore, a dispatcher for Universal Taxi who was working in the office across the street from the LIRR station when the crash happened, said, "I was sitting down and I heard a big explosion. It was big like an earthquake."
Cruz said she then looked out the taxi business' window and saw that a train had stopped.
"I heard people screaming," she said. "A few minutes later, I heard all the cops and ambulances coming. It was crazy."
Service was suspended in both directions of the Ronkonkoma and Port Jefferson branches, the Long Island Rail Road said.
A Red Cross bus took some passengers to the Hicksville station.
Westbury Mayor Peter Cavallaro said the location is by a grade crossing that will be eliminated by the railroad's third-track project.
Two Newsday employees on the train said the train hit two bumps just after 7:15 p.m., then flames burst on one side of the car windows as the train ground to a halt just before the Westbury station.
"People started screaming," said Newsday reporter Craig Schneider, who boarded the train in Farmingdale.
It got hot inside the train car, said Newsday copy editor Nirmal Mitra, but the train kept going for about two minutes after passing the flames.
Emergency personnel came inside the train and told passengers to remain inside, and that a vehicle had been hit, he said.
Police said the train hit a motor vehicle and that the station platform was "really destroyed," Schneider said. The cement at the station platform appeared to be in pieces, he said.
Not long after the strike, emergency responders helped passengers down step ladders from the elevated tracks onto the railroad and directed them to Linden Avenue, about a block east of the station, to wait for transportation, Mitra said.
