BALTIMORE, Md. — A terrifying scene in Baltimore Friday afternoon as a CSX train derailed sending several carrier cars and a tanker off the rails.
It happened near Falls Road right next to the Streetcar Museum. There weren't any hazardous materials and there weren’t any passenger carriers.
A giant metal mess now lays right next to the Streetcar Museum.
Jennifer Gwynn couldn’t have been any closer, she was on her phone in her van.
“I heard a loud bang,” Gwynn said. “I looked up and the train was coming off of the bridge.”
It was coming right at her. Crashing into a telephone pole that came down on her van while she was sitting in it.
“My first reaction was just to drive off. I started to drive off and I guess some BGE guys that were working up the street they told me get out of the car because I was surrounded by power lines.”
Five cars derailed including what appeared to be a tanker—power lines snapping and hissing as she tried to figure out how to get to safety.
“The car of the train was still hanging off the bridge and it was a tank and they didn’t know if there was chemicals in it or what. They were kind of just preparing for an explosion and wanted to get everyone out of there and away from the train. It happened to be cooking oil fortunately.”
She got out safely, but doesn’t know if her van was or will be crushed during the cleanup
Up above hundreds of people came out to catch a glimpse of the wreckage. Nearby streets were shut down for hours.
“I heard some sort of a noise like a weird vibration and I didn’t know exactly what it was,” said Iris Hughey a MICA student who lives nearby.
As the cleanup begins everyone was thankful no one was hurt.
“It was very fast when it happened, so I didn’t even time to really react you don’t expect to look up and see a train coming down at you,” said Gwynn.
We're working to find out how long this will take to clean up.
TAKE A LOOK AT THE DERAILMENT BELOW:
