Seven people were injured early Saturday morning in southeastern Missouri after two freight trains collided, taking out a nearby overpass.
A Union Pacific train t-boned a Burlington Northern train at an intersection, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter told KFVS-TV. The collision caused one of the trains to derail and hit a pillar under the overpass, collapsing it.
Two vehicles were on the overpass when it collapsed, Walter said, and five people from those cars were taken to the hospital with arm and ankle fractures. Two train conductors were also injured, Reuters reported.
Several fire departments responded to the crash, which occurred near Chaffee, Mo., and extinguished a fire caused by the accident, KDSK-TV reported.
The National Transportation Safety Board has dispatched a team to investigate the incident, CNN reported.
The collision comes just two days after a span of an Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington collapsed — caused when an oversized truck hit an overhead girder — and just over a week after a commuter train derailed in Bridgeport, Conn., suspending rail service along the heavily traveled New York-Boston corridor.