“As we pulled into Philly, I closed my eyes for a few minutes to take a rest. The next thing I remember was being evacuated from an overturned train on a gurney in a neck brace.”
That is how local real estate agent and Bethesda resident Hans Wydler remembers the Amtrak train derailment that killed eight people and injured more than 200 others on the night of May 12.
Wydler, 49, said Tuesday he was traveling on the train to New York to attend a funeral for his friend’s father. He remembers working on his laptop in the café car, responding to emails around 9:30 p.m. The car was the third one back from the engine.
After the train derailed, Wydler said he saw a flash and then doesn’t remember anything else happening until he woke up on the gurney. When he regained consciousness on an embankment next to the toppled train, he could see people marked with yellow and red tags as part of the triage process. He had a yellow tag—which indicated non-life-threatening injuries. Others around him had red tags—life-threatening injuries—and some also had biohazard stickers. When the train left the rails, it also emptied the sewage out of the toilets.
After the crash, Wydler discovered a young man and fellow passenger had helped pull him from the wreckage. The man, Zachary Feldman, a 24-year-old Brooklyn resident, put a tourniquet on Wydler’s head wounds to prevent bleeding and stayed nearby as emergency workers treated him.
“I feel overwhelmed by how kind, generous and brave people were,” Wydler said. “It gave me a lot of faith in humanity. People were totally helpless and terrified, but to have total strangers be there for you was very humbling.”
Wydler says Feldman even helped him call his wife after he lost his cell phone in the wreckage. “He had his phone and when I came to, he asked, ‘What’s your wife’s phone number? Let me call her for you,’ ” Wydler said.
Feldman told Newsweek passengers were inside the overturned cafe car for nearly 20 minutes before firefighters entered.
Wydler was admitted to a hospital where he received staples in his head and doctors diagnosed him with a concussion and dislocated shoulder. He also suffered injuries to his hip and his teeth were damaged. In the crash he lost his laptop, luggage and cell phone.
He was released from the hospital the morning after the crash and stayed in a Philadelphia hotel the next day with his wife, Ginny, who had traveled from Bethesda with one of his work colleagues. Wydler said that when he arrived at the hotel he was wearing a bloody hospital gown, a pair of blue jeans and one shoe. His clothes were cut off of him by medical staff after the crash. Hotel staff bought him a new outfit.
“The hotel staff were amazing, they really went above and beyond,” Wydler said.
He has since returned to his Bethesda home, but is still making frequent trips to his doctors, who are monitoring his injuries. He says he hasn’t been contacted by Amtrak, besides a visit from an insurance adjustor while he was in the hospital.
“I still have headaches, my hip is giving me a lot of trouble, I’m taking it one day at a time,” Wydler said. He added that he is starting to return to work.
On Wednesday, he plans to celebrate his daughter’s 14th birthday. “I can’t tell you how blessed I am to see it,” he said.
As for whether he’ll take the Amtrak train again, he said, “No time soon.”
NTSB investigators work at the site of the deadly Amtrak train derailment. Credit: NTSB
Above photo of Hans Wydler via Wydler's Facebook Page.
