California Metrolink train collides with truck, 30 injured

Three cars of a Southern California Metrolink commuter train have derailed and tumbled onto their sides after a collision with a truck on tracks in Ventura County northwest of Los Angeles.

Oxnard police Sgt. Denise Shadinger says the crash reported at 5:44 a.m. Tuesday caused a number of injuries. The Los Angeles Times reports at least 30 injured. 

Shadinger says the truck became fully engulfed in flames.

A KABC-TV news helicopter is showing firefighters treating numerous people at the scene.

Metrolink's website says the train was on a run from Ventura County to Los Angeles.

On Feb. 10, a Metrolink train derailed a few hundred feet from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. No injuries were reported in that incident and about 100 passengers were evacuated from the train.

In 2005, a Metrolink train crash left 11 dead and 180 people injured. The Los Angeles Daily News recently reported:

Since then, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which governs Metrolink, has shelled out more than $500 million to buttress safety along 512 miles of track stretching from Ventura to San Bernardino to northern San Diego counties. Upgrades include “sealed” grade crossings, safer rail cars and locomotives, automatic train stops and the nation’s first onboard rail video cameras. They also include the nation’s first so-called Positive Train Control, a high-tech system to prevent train crashes in lieu of human error or natural disaster, expected to fully roll out by spring.

“Nobody ever wants to experience anything like it ever again,” said Jeff Lustgarten, spokesman for Metrolink, of the Glendale and Chatsworth train crashes. “(They) shook the agency to its core. We are a safety-first agency.

“Metrolink has come a long way in 10 years: We can safely say we now have the safest commuter rail system in the country.”