People are transported after a commuter train derailed at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, New York.
A New York City train derailed after ramming into a bumper at a downtown Brooklyn terminal during Wednesday's morning rush hour, injuring more than 100 commuters in the metropolitan area's second major rail accident since late September.
Emergency crews swarmed Atlantic Terminal after the Long Island Railroad train went off the tracks inside the busy transportation hub at about 8:30 a.m. local time, the New York City Fire Department said.
While none of the injuries were life-threatening, at least 11 people were sent to the hospital, Deputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue said at a briefing at the crash site.
The train, arriving from the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway, failed to stop on time and struck a bumping block at a fairly low rate of speed, which caused it to derail, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at the briefing.
About 103 people were injured in the accident, the fire department said in a Twitter message. The front two cars of the six-carriage train were severely damaged.
The engineer was probably responsible for failing to stop the train before it hit the bumper, said Tom Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the LIRR.
"At that speed, it's pretty much the locomotive engineer's responsibility to stop the train," Prendergast said as he stood beside Cuomo at the briefing.
In late September, a New Jersey Transit train crashed into a terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, killing one woman and injuring 114 people, including the engineer.
Cuomo, who has made infrastructure improvements a centerpiece of his agenda, said Wednesday's incident was minor in comparison. The most serious injury in the crash was a broken leg, he said.
"There was an extensive damage in Hoboken," Cuomo said. "That train was coming in much faster, did much more damage."
In Brooklyn, commuters described a frightening and chaotic scene on social media. "People flying everywhere," Serena Janae, who said she was a passenger on the derailed train, wrote on Facebook.
The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they were sending investigators to the scene.
The Long Island Railroad is the United State's largest commuter rail system, serving more than 330,000 passengers a day, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Atlantic Terminal, which also connects commuters to nine city subway lines, is one of the busiest New York stations.
There were no major service disruptions for other Long Island Railroad lines at the terminal, an MTA official said.
Earlier, officials said crews were working to restore service at the terminal by the evening rush hour.
© Thomson Reuters 2017