Train Crash Kills 2, At Least 70 Injured In South Carolina

A Miami-bound Amtrak train from New York collided with a freight train near Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday morning leaving two dead and 70 injured, according to reports.

Amtrak train 91, with 139 passengers and eight crew members, crashed into a CSX freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, according to South Carolina Emergency Management Division Derrec Becker. The collision, which occurred at about 2:35 a.m. ET, derailed the lead engine and several passenger cars, Amtrak said in a statement.

"The injuries range from cuts and bruises to severe broken bones. All the injured have been transported to local hospitals," Becker said.

Officials removed the passengers from the train and into an emergency shelter at a nearby middle school prepped by the Red Cross, according to the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department. Temperatures ranged in the upper 30’s.

"We know they are shaken up quite a bit. We know this is like nothing else they have ever been through. So we wanted to get them out of the cold, get them out of the weather – get them to a warm place," sheriff’s spokesman Adam Myrick said.

Derek Pettaway, a passenger heading to Florida in one of Amtrak's rear cars, caught the incident on his smartphone.

"For those who knew I was traveling to Florida today on the train I just wanted to let you know I'm ok," he wrote on Instagram with a picture of the wreckage. "My train was the one that derailed in South Carolina, but I was in the last car and it stayed on the track."

About 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel leaked onto roads. Hazmat crews responded to the spill. There was "no threat to the public at the time," officials said. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation.

This was the second deadly Amtrak collision in the past week.

An Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a West Virginia retreat slammed into a garbage truck Wednesday, leaving one dead and several wounded.