At least 15 killed, scores are injured in LA train wreck

Rescue efforts underway hours after collision

Rescuers removed a victim as others continued efforts after a commuter train and a freight train crashed in Los Angeles. (Reed Saxon/Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES - A freight train collided with a rush-hour commuter train in suburban Los Angeles on Friday evening, killing at least 15 people and injuring scores of others, many of them critically, in what may be the deadliest accident in the history of the southern California commuter trains.

The accident happened in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley, north of downtown Los Angeles, just before 4:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Almost immediately following the collision, firefighters, using cranes and ladders, swarmed a toppled and grossly twisted car, reached through smashed windows and tried to extract passengers. Firefighters said they expected the death toll to rise as they attempted to search through the toppled car.

A steady stream of helicopters fluttered in to remove the injured - some of them gravely so. Scores of ambulances and hundreds of police officers joined the rescue effort, which fanned into a nearby park where a triage unit was set up.

A spokeswoman for Metrolink said that about 350 people might have been on the afternoon train commuter train, which apparently ran into the freight train traveling along the same track in the opposite direction, although it was not immediately clear why or precisely how the crash occurred. The force of the collision was so strong, an engine from the freight train lodged into a Metrolink passenger car.

"It is a very, very sad situation," Denise Tyrell , a spokeswoman for Metrolink told the Los Angeles Times. "We honestly don't know what happened. Obviously two trains are not supposed to be at the same place at the same time," she said.

Metrolink trains have begun to carry more passengers than usual in recent months as gas prices have climbed.

Rescue workers aided by cadaver dogs searched for passengers - dead and alive - and the residential neighborhood nearby filled with frantic family members of passengers trying desperately to get information.

The engine of the Union Pacific train, lying along a 90-degree curve of the track, was smashed almost beyond recognition.