Dozens injured in San Francisco light-rail crash

SAN FRANCISCO – A light-rail train crashed into the rear of another train at a San Francisco boarding platform Saturday, injuring at least 48 people, authorities said.

The injured were treated at hospitals. Four of them appeared to have severe injuries after the Municipal Railway L train rear-ended the K train, also light-rail, about 2:30 p.m.

“This is probably one of the largest multiple-casualty incidents in recent years (in San Francisco),” said Pat Gardner, a deputy chief with the San Francisco Fire Department.

Gardner said about half of those treated suffered moderate injuries and that everyone who was injured remained conscious.

Witnesses said the westbound L train barreled into the K train as it emerged from a tunnel connecting downtown San Francisco to the city’s western neighborhoods.

The front of the L train was smashed and the K train suffered less damage. The operator of the L train was among the serious injured.

Shin San, 15, said she got a phone call from her sister, who was on the L when it hit the K train.

“She said she was on the L and heard a boom,” she said. “She saw glass windows shattered and a guy got his ear cut.”

Witnesses said more than a dozen people sat on benches along the boarding platform after the crash, some of them holding bloodied heads.

Most of the passengers on the trains, which bustle with shoppers on Saturday afternoons, were adults.

Rescue workers set up a triage system to isolate the most severely injured, bandaging their heads and immobilizing their necks on stretchers before they were carted to waiting rescue vehicles.

“We thought a bomb went off,” said Mike Burke, a San Francisco banker who lives near the crash site. He was walking past the station with his wife, Linda, after they went to the movies nearby.

“Lots of people (in the trains) were still sitting in their seats with their heads thrown back, stunned,” Linda Burke said, adding that she saw people on the platform crying.