Authorities are reporting that two Union Pacific Railroad freight trains collided head-on in the Oklahoma Panhandle Sunday, leaving three crew members missing.
According to MSNBC News, the tragic train crash happened shortly after 10am on tracks about two miles east of Goodwell, Okla. when a westbound train consisting of three locomotives and 80 rail cars collided with an eastbound intermodal train consisting of four locomotives and 108 rail cars.
“Two engineers and one conductor were unaccounted for after the collision,” Union Pacific Railroad spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza told reporters.
The names of the missing crew members were not released.
Espinoza added that a forth person — the conductor of the westbound train — jumped from the train before the two engines collided, narrowly escaping injury.
“He did not require any medical treatment, but is understandably pretty shaken up,” Espinoza said.
Per witness reports, the two trains collided traveling around 68mph and ignited a fire upon impact.
About 50 firefighters from the Goodwell, Guymon and Hooker fire departments worked to extinguish the blaze, which was burning in a sparsely populated area of the county, Texas County Emergency Management Director Harold Tyson said. No evacuations have been ordered, he added.
“I’ve never seen such chaos. There are so many mangled, burned train parts. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Tyson said.
As of Monday, the cause of the crash has not been determined and it remains unclear whether there was radio communication between the two trains or if brakes were applied before the collision.
USA Today has raw footage from the 2012 Oklahoma train crash in the video below:
