Death toll rises to 23 in train crash near LA

LOS ANGELES - The death toll from a head-on collision of a passenger train and a freight train near Los Angeles stood at 23 and could rise, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Saturday.

"The latest count is 23 people died in this accident and 135 have been injured," many critically, the governor told reporters.

Schwarzenegger said that the crash, which he called "one of the worst train accidents in modern history in California," appeared to have been caused by human error.

The Ventura County Line passenger train with 222 passengers aboard smashed into a Union Pacific freight train on Friday, near the town of Chatsworth, some 50 kilometres northwest of Los Angeles.

"Metrolink has talked about there was some human failure there because we never know exactly, whether it was mechanical failure or computer failure or something is wrong with the tracks. They say it was human failure," Schwarzenegger said.

The extent of the devastation and the high number of critically injured passengers taxed the area's emergency response capabilities, Los Angeles City Fire captain Steve Ruda said.

"We treated 135 patients yesterday, about 40 of those were critical patients, which is a very high number," Ruda said earlier.

Critical patients were flown to area trauma centres. "We utilised every trauma centre in the county," he said.

"They're continuing to work in an extrication effort, although we believe the likelihood of anybody being alive in the wreckage at this point is very remote," Ruda added.

Each train was believed to be travelling at the time of the head-on collision at about 60 kilometres per hour. The impact collapsed the first passenger car into its locomotive.

"There's no way to describe this train accident other than a tragedy," Schwarzenegger said earlier, adding that the state will provide emergency response assistance.

Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrell said heavy equipment had been brought in to raise the locomotive that derailed and fell onto its side.

At least seven cars from the freight train derailed, although most remained standing in accordion fashion across the tracks.

The interior of the train was "bloody, a mess. Just a disaster. It was horrible," passenger Austin Walbridge told a local television news reporter.

The Metrolink train's usual routine is reportedly to wait until the Union Pacific freight train clears the track.

The crash was the deadliest since the Metrolink crash of January 2005, when 11 people died and dozens were injured when a Metrolink train slammed into a Jeep Cherokee parked on train track, derailed and hit a freight train.