Franklin Gray and White Blog

"Monday night a number of people, including very young children, are still recovering at Louisville hospitals tonight.

Their afternoon of fun, riding the popular passenger train at the Louisville Zoo, turned into a nightmare.  Two have serious injuries.

One of the locomotives derailed as it was driving near the gorilla forest.  It was pulling thirty people on board at the time; one man was trapped and had to be rescued.

The area near the gorilla area is where the derailment happened just after 4:30 p.m. Monday.

WHAS11’s Chase Cain talked with a woman whose relatives were on the train.  EMS officials said none of the 22 hurt have any critical injuries, but several are still at the hospital.

Five adults were sent to university, and seventeen children wound up at Kosair Hospital.

Meantime, federal authorities have begun their investigation into how this happened.

It took more than a dozen ambulances to get everyone to downtown hospitals; a mix of very young children to adults.  With others still being treated at the zoo, in all 22 were hurt.

Dr. Neal Richmond, Metro EMS director, said “They were all able to communicate with us. Vital signs were stable.”

Here’s what it appears happened; the train that circles the zoo flipped, on a sharp curve in the track, trapping one man underneath.  Two of his young children and his wife were also on board. We talked to the great grandmother of the children from the emergency room at Kosair.

Pat Langford said, “There’re so many people up here.  They just keep bringing them in and bringing them in.  I guess Chris is the one that got hurt the most because the train was on him.  I could hear him screaming. I didn’t know who it was.  I guess they had to cut the train off of him to get him out of there.  The baby is 2 months old and he’s doing pretty well.  They’re getting ready. He’s got a lot of scratches on him and the little girl they couldn’t find out anything yet.”

Pat’s granddaughter made it out with some scratches.  And already has her theory about what caused this, along with several others at the zoo who told us a new conductor had hopped on board just before the crash.

“My granddaughter told me he started going fast and the train derailed because the brakes went out.”

A federal inspector will be out at the location to begin checking into what caused this crash.  But at least 3 people told us they overheard zoo employees talking about possible brake failure. So that’s certainly something they’ll look into"