Amtrak Train Survivor: 'I Saw People & Bags Flying'

Eight people have now been confirmed dead after an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia Tuesday. Samia Kirchner is among the survivors. 

She was traveling from Baltimore to her home just outside of Trenton, NJ where she lives with her husband, Mark, a graduate of Wake Forest University.

Kirchner usually takes an earlier train to get home from her job teaching architecture at Morgan State University, but on Tuesday she stayed late to get some work done. She took a seat in the cafeteria car to take advantage of a table to get more work done. The ride was rickety, she says, but it usually is.

But just before the crash, the train started swerving wildly back and forth.

“The next thing I know I see people flying, bags flying, and I'm not moving – so I'm like, am I dreaming?,” she says. “I felt like an observer. But the only thing bringing me back to tangible reality was the soot and the dust and the mud and all that in my mouth, so I could taste the reality. And that's the only thing that was linking me to everything that was flying around.”

She says the car tipped over on the same side she was sitting on. A man sitting near her landed on top of her, and he took the brunt of the flying debris. A cafeteria worker warned the passengers that the car could be sitting on a riverbank or some other hill. Kirchner says that was the first time the crash filled her with fear.

“We started crawling towards the backside where the train had fell apart and there was a gaping hole so we could get out of it, and someone was there to help me get out,” she says. “But I guess I was scared enough not to get my things together – even my shoes – so I was barefoot, with nothing, I had lost everything.”

It was dark when she emerged from the wreckage, and she could see the cars around her but not the destroyed front of the train. She thought the cafeteria car she was riding in was the most heavily damaged. It wasn't until the next day that Kirchner learned about the magnitude of the deadly crash.

“That's when it started hitting me that, okay, so I'm really lucky,” she says.

Her husband joined her in the early morning hours after the crash at a Philadelphia hospital. At the time, she was still barefoot – her shoes, purse and laptop have yet to be recovered. She's now back home, and thankful that her injuries appear minor.

The state Department of Transportation says trains that usually run from North Carolina to New York City won't be able to travel north of Philadelphia because of the crash. Normal service isn't expected to resume again until early next week.

Updates on the North Carolina trains can be found at North Carolina Amtrak's Facebook page.