Violent and dramatic footage of a train wreck in Louisiana was captured on video over the weekend by a gas station cashier in Louisiana. The video shows a freight train smashing into an 18-wheeler. The non-fatal train wreck, which happened Sunday in Mer Rouge, Louisiana, was shot by Crystal Carter as she sat in a nearby car.
Mer Rouge is a small town in central Louisiana about four-and-a-half hours north of New Orleans.
Everyone involved in the train wreck is in stable condition, according to local media reports. Area authorities said that there have been three deaths at the crossing in the past, though.
Eyewitness Carter, who works at a gas station next to the train tracks, told local station KNOE that it’s not the first time that she’s seen a crash at that location.
“When I saw that everybody started running and everything, and everything else just piled up,” said Carter, who took the video from inside a vehicle. She told the TV station that broadcast her amateur video of the dramatic moment when the train hit the stranded semi-truck that she was petrified.
“I was so scared I was frozen I didn’t know what to do,” she said of filming the train wreck.
The crossing is notorious for safety problems, and Carter said the trestle causes trucks to get stuck and should get fixed.
“I believe it’s really time to get that fixed because it’s too low for somebody to be coming through here in a truck,” said Carter.
Two Union Pacific engineers who were injured in the train wreck were in stable condition on Monday, but the impact caused the train to derail . The truck driver wasn’t injured because he had jumped out of his truck and “took off running” when he realized it was stuck, according to an eyewitness.
Mer Rouge Police Chief Mitch Stephens told reporters that it was the second time there was an 18-wheeler train wreck at the crossing. He said the local and state response to accidents at the crossing has been extensive, and they will open again on Tuesday after the most recent crash . Several detours were set up around the train wreck to allow clean up crews to clear away debris.
“We’ve had Louisiana hazmat here,” Stephens told KNOE . ‘We’ve had the Department of Environmental Quality. We’ve had the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security. We’ve had state police that has been assisting.”
One of the derailed cars from the train wreck was reportedly leaking a non-toxic substance called argon gas that can cause asphyxia, unconsciousness and dizziness if there is too much of it.