One person died and about 114 were injured when a New Jersey transit train crashed at Hoboken station on Thursday morning.
The train did not slow down upon reaching the station and smashed the track stop barriers and hit the interior wall of the Hoboken Terminal, bringing down the roof and concrete on the platform.
The incident happened at around 8:45 AM, when the train was carrying 250 passengers.
"You felt like this huge, huge bang," passenger Steve Mesiano told NBC. "The lights went off, and then you started to see like -- I was in the window seat, so I could see like outside, what was happening, and the roof just collapsed on the first car."
People broke the emergency windows to get out, helping other passengers to get out before the first responders arrived.
"Once we got off we noticed that people were stuck and they had to come through the windows," Jaime Weatherhead-Saul, a passenger who was between standing between the first and second cars said. "And the conductor came off and he was completely bloodied."
Train operator Thomas Gallagher, 48, was severely injured in the accident but was released from the hospital after treatment. He was working as an NJ Transit employee for 19 years, and had an experience of 10 years as an engineer.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he was cooperating with the investigators.
The cause of the accident is not yet known.
"We have no indication that this is anything other than a tragic accident but ... we're going to let the law enforcement professionals pursue the facts," Christie said in a news conference.
The train was not equipped with an anti-collision system known as positive train control, which automatically slows down or stops trains running on high speeds.
The NJ Transit has been instructed to install PTC systems, but the railroads had requested to postpone the deadline last year.
"PTC has been one of our priorities, we know that it can prevent accidents, whether it is involved in this accident that is definitely one of the things we will look at carefully," said T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, Vice Chairman at National Transportation Safety Board.
Over 100,000 people travel via NJ Transit trains daily to commute between Jew Jersey and New York.
The Hoboken Terminal was constructed as far back as in 1907, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been restored many times and was last repaired in 2012.
