WASHINGTON, D.C. — The rail car was on its side, suspended like a bridge between two embankments. The side window had been smashed, and the inside was filled with dirt. There were three trapped female passengers, two of whom seemed to be suffocating, and it was about 120 degrees, the Washington Post reports.
In the sweltering bowels of the toppled Amtrak train car Monday, Montgomery County firefighter Mick McKenzie, who had crawled to the front where the women were pinned, first introduced himself: “Ladies, I’m fireman Mick McKenzie. We’re in a bit of a predicament here.”
He asked for everyone’s name. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he recounted yesterday. “First off, we’re going to start praying.” They all held hands. It was a basic prayer, he said. “It wasn’t anything glamorous.”
Then he told them: “I’m going to do everything in my power to get you guys out. I’m not going to leave you.”
And for the next hour, McKenzie, a county police officer and several other firefighters used crowbars, power tools, ropes, slings and raw muscle power to manhandle the three women out of the collapsed front of the car and on to safety.
It was, perhaps, the most dramatic act in a day that was filled with drama, big and small, as several hundred firefighters and police officers worked to get scores of stunned passengers off the wrecked train.
County fire officials said yesterday that the three women, who were identified only as residents of Raleigh, N.C., were the last to be extricated from the cars. They had suffered injuries that did not appear life-threatening and were rescued without mishap, officials said.
McKenzie, who was aboard Wheaton-based Rescue Squad 28, was among the first to arrive at the scene of the 13-car train derailment in Kensington shortly after 2 p.m. Monday. With him were the squad’s commander, Capt. David Moltrup, and firefighter Joe Dingle.
Rescue 28, a huge white-and-blue vehicle, is equipped with an array of heavy hydraulic extrication equipment that is used to pry open crushed metal in things like car wrecks. “It’s a great big tool box on wheels,” Moltrup, 54, said yesterday.
Once the squad arrived at the scene, McKenzie made his way to the rail car that seemed to be in the worst condition. It had flipped on its side — it looked like it might even have rolled several times — and plunged into some woods, where it became wedged between the embankments.
McKenzie said he clambered up on the side of the double-decker car, pried open the door with a crowbar and placed his yellow helmet near the opening to show other firefighters where he had gone inside.
He dropped down and found dozens of people still trying to get out. McKenzie told the passengers to stay calm and make their way out as best they could, and asked whether anyone was trapped. “Yeah, yeah,” he said people replied. “In the front.”
Crawling and walking through the maze of seats and debris, McKenzie made his way to the front of the car. In the first seat, he found the women trapped together.
“They were pinned big-time,” he said, tangled together with one lying on top of the other two. “The thing that I noticed right off the bat was that the one on top was suffocating the other two.”
McKenzie, a veteran of the 1996 train wreck in Silver Spring that killed 11 people, as well as the Oklahoma City and Pentagon disasters, tried to radio for help but couldn’t be heard because of heavy traffic on the frequencies.
“Rescue Squad 28 to command,” he radioed. “Urgent.” Finally he got through. He called for assistance and for the squad’s power tools so he could get to work. Everything arrived.
Moltrup joined him, along with Capt. Dale Johnson and firefighter Mike Semelsberger. Other firefighters lugged a 60-pound “jaws of life” extrication tool, along with its 80-pound gas generator, to the car. They set up the generator on the upper wall of the car and passed the tool to McKenzie and the others up front.
Inside it was an oven. “Temperatures were soaring,” McKenzie said. “It was very hot.”
The firefighters had shed their helmets and coats, but they were still in their heavy pants and boots. “It was getting to the point where if we moved quick, we’d see spots,” Moltrup said. “We were really jammed up in there.”
Meanwhile, others were working to pry open the train’s windows to get some air inside, and water bottles were being passed in to the victims and the firefighters, Moltrup said.
“I tried to make them as comfortable as I could,” McKenzie said, “but you could see the worry on their faces.”
Moltrup tried to cheer them up by joking that this was all a little like being on the TV show “Survivor.” “We tried to get them to talk and laugh a little bit,” he said.
McKenzie said they first worked to free the woman who was on top of the others. He told her it would probably hurt, and she cried out as they pried her free from the bent metal.
As they worked, someone mentioned to him that the woman was blind. That’s okay, McKenzie said he told her, ” ‘you don’t want to see what’s going on here anyway.’ We kind of chuckled about that a little bit.”
But it was very close quarters, and now that the woman was free, the rescuers had to move her without dropping her back on top of the others, the firefighters said.
They couldn’t get a stretcher in, so they used some straps, grasped her by the arms and legs and hoisted her backward. “One, two, three,” McKenzie said. “Up she came and out she came in one big lift. We were putting everything we had into it.”
Then the others were freed. At one point Moltrup wound up under a victim and was lifting her with his back. “They were screaming in pain,” McKenzie said. One looked like she was going into shock. “It was just a matter of we gotta move, move, move.”
As the women were maneuvered out of the car, McKenzie said he told them, “God bless you.”
“They were God blessing us,” he said.
“And away they went.”