A locomotive crashed into a truck stopped at a train-track crossing in the Louisiana town of Mer Rouge on Sunday. Stunning footage of the crash shows the collision, which injured the conductor and engineer of the train.
“Holy mother of moo moo,” said a woman recording the scene just moments before the stuck tractor trailer, carrying a crane, was demolished by the incoming train.
The crash left the train’s engineer with a compound leg fracture, Mer Rouge Police Chief Mitch Stevens told KNOE. The train’s conductor had to have surgery to remove his spleen and on his heart, related to several broken ribs he suffered in the wreck. Both are in stable condition, KNOE reported.
The driver of the truck was not inside the vehicle during the collision.
The train derailed, flipped, and began to leak fuel, triggering a half-mile wide evacuation, KNOE reported.
The truck was only stuck on the tracks for two or three minutes, Chief Stevenssaid, adding that it was stopped because of low-lying crossing lights that the truck would not have cleared.
Clean-up at the site is ongoing.
"They're making very good progress. They've gotten more done in the last two days than what I had expected," Stevens said.
The woman who recorded the footage said she and two others in a vehicle “were sitting at a train track … on our way from West Monroe, LA to Memphis when we notice a tractor trailer with a crane stuck on the train tracks. Then the train crossing lights came on and I grabbed the camera as the train smashed into the crane.”
She added that the crash occurred directly in front of a police station.