September 30,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, full transcript of Governor Christie addressing yesterdays train crash in Hoboken.
Governor Christie: “ Good afternoon. I’m pleased to be joined here today by Lieutenant Governor Guadagno, by my partner in New York, Governor Cuomo. Governor Cuomo and I have just taken a tour of the damage inside. Obviously an extraordinary tragedy. We pray for the family of the one fatality that we have confirmed for her and for her family. We now have a revised total of injured. We have 108 injured in this accident and all of those have been evacuated to local hospitals, where they’re receiving the care they need. We pray for their recovery. The engineer who was operating the train was also critically injured. He is at a local hospital and cooperating with law enforcement officials in the investigation. What we know is that this train came in at a high rate of speed into the station and crashed through all of the barriers bringing it right to the interior wall of the Hoboken Terminal. Extraordinary reaction from local law enforcement and EMS along with civilian passengers, who assisted EMS, and local police and State Police in evacuating the trains as quickly as possible and helping with the triage of the passengers who were injured and getting them immediately to local hospitals for them to receive health care. There will be others who will speak today about some of the specifics, Commissioner Hammer, Mr. Prendergast from the MTA, about the specifics of commuting both this afternoon and tomorrow. We won’t address that specifically. Both Governor Cuomo and I come from a law enforcement background, as does the Lieutenant Governor. My admonition when I was U.S. Attorney all the time to my prosecutors and agents was, don’t jump to conclusions, let the facts lead you to the proper conclusions, and so we’re not going to speculate about the cause of the accident. It is that we’re in the midst of an investigation. I was called by the White House today as well. They have not only dispatched the NTSB and the Federal Railway Administration but also have pledged any resources that we need additionally to deal with the victims or to deal with what’s happened here at the Hoboken Terminal. We were pleased to get that call. As I said to a number of you earlier today, from the time that the incident happened this morning, Governor Cuomo and I have been in communication since the train began its journey today in the state of New York and we have a number of New York citizens who were on that train as well coming here to New Jersey, and so we’re going to work together to make sure that the investigation is seamless and coordinated, that we come to a conclusion as quickly as possible and then if there are steps that need to be taken thereafter to provide for even greater assurance of safety for the people of our states, you can be assured that we’ll work together through the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, MTA and New Jersey Transit to make sure that that occurs. And so we again, we pray for the victims and their families. We are on the scene. We’re going to continue to monitor what’s going on. We have engineers that are examining the structural integrity of the building now. We have no estimate as to when the terminal will be able to be reopened, except to say that it appears that the PATH terminal, the structural integrity there is fine and so that PATH trains will be able to use the terminal. As for the New Jersey Transit portion, we don’t have an estimate yet on that and we’re going to need some time to do that, so I want to turn this over to Governor Cuomo. We will also have Commissioner Hammer and MTA director Prendergast to make some comments and then Governor Cuomo, and I will come back to take on-topic questions.”
